Skip to main content

Full text of "Columbia College today - (1970-71)"

See other formats 










Remember the Soph-Frosh Rush? 


Well, it’s gone. 

So are nickel beers, and very low faculty salaries,- 
fraternity hazing, and feeble scholarship funds. 
College today is a different world. 

And, many claim, a better world— 
for the students, the faculty, the nation. 

One of the things that made it possible is 
the loyalty and generosity of Columbia alumni. 
The College needed your help and you gave it. 
The College continues to need your help. 

So do the faculty and the undergraduates. 

More than ever. 




Columbia College 
Annual Fund 





For one who returns to Columbia after a nine-year ab¬ 
sence there is, to put it mildly, a considerable cultural shock to 
absorb. Just about all that one finds familiar are the buildings 
and a handful of faces in the Dean's Office and among the 
faculty. The mo6t profound change, of course, is in the nature 
of the students: assertive, skeptical, and concerned instead of 
passive, deferential, and complacent. 

Those nine years span not one but several generation 
gaps. In 1961, when I graduated, radical political activity was 
non-existent. For that matter, few undergraduates were involved 
in any kind of political activity at all. There was little apparent 
reason to be. Vietnam was a squib in the back pages of the 
major newspapers. The draft wasn't a middle class problem (and 
—with relatively few exceptions—who but the sons of the middle 
class attended Columbia College?). When a single long-haired 
freshman appeared in the entering class of 1964, a College ad¬ 
ministrator only half-jokingly advised a group of student leaders 
to sneak up on him and give him a haircut. When University 
officials disclosed plans to expand southward, my friends and 
I thought the idea was grand. Few of us considered that this 
meant the displacement of hundreds of families, many of them 
black or Spanish. Those who did accepted as God-given Co¬ 
lumbia's right to pre-empt its surroundings for institutional use. 

It wasn't until 1962 and 1963 that politics came to mean, 
for many students, something more than jockeying for a pinky 
ring or the chairmanship of a King's Crown Activity. Those were 
the years of the freedom rides and the sit-ins, when the young 


believed—with an optimism which in retrospect seems naive— 
that they could transform society by storming, nonviolently, a 
few bastions of recalcitrance. The Kennedys still reigned in 
Washington, and the federal government was looked upon as 
an ally in the fight for justice. 

Then came the Johnson years, when the war thrust itself 
upon the consciousness of every thinking American, and vital 
domestic programs, so rich in early promise, were curtailed. In¬ 
volved students were becoming angry and impatient, but they 
remained optimistic. Their optimism, however, was no longer 
based upon faith in the willingness of government to serve as 
an instrument for meaningful reform. Rather, it came increasingly 
to rest upon a belief in the efficacy of revolution as a means of 
destroying the system and replacing it with a better one. 

The '68 uprising was a watershed. Students today seem to 
fall into one of four categories. Some cling to a revolutionary 
creed. Others have given up in despair both on revolution and 
the system, and have turned inwards, sometimes to drugs. Still 
others continue to believe in the system as a vehicle for change, 
or are willing, in desperation, to give it one more chance. And 
there remain a handful who simply go along mindlessly with 
whatever they are told to do. But there are fewer of these than 
in the past. 

The growing assertiveness of undergraduates has had an 
impact upon the curriculum. Students who are skeptical of au¬ 
thority chafe at requirements. Students who are disenchanted 
with the West see no reason to study courses which emphasize 
the Western tradition. The faculty is groping for a program which 
will excite these students without compromising academic stand¬ 
ards. 

A handful are silly enough to suppose they can bring on the 
Millenium by smashing windows or shouting obscenities at deans. 
Most,, however, are not only more politically involved than their 
predecessors were a decade ago, but more politically sophisti¬ 
cated and aware. True, many are so political that they have little 
use for disinterested scholarship, especially the study of the 
past. But this is largely because there is an atmosphere of crisis, 
on campus and throughout society, which did not prevail during 
the 'fifties. Their anger and cynicism reflect adversely not upon 
them, but upon the decision-makers who have sacrificed the 
young, the black, and the poor, the cities and the schools, to a 
military obsession. The principal hope of this country lies in 
such students as these, and not in politicians who make political 
capital out of denouncing them. 

M.B.M. 


~ ..Columbia 
College 

Today 


EDITOR 

Martin B. Margulies '61 
ASSOCIATE EDITORS 
Malinda Teel 
llene Barth 
ART DIRECTOR 
C. Gordon Chapman 


ALUMNI ADVISORY COMMITTEE 
Ray Robinson '41 Chairman 
Arthur Rothstein '35 
Edward Rice '40 
Edward Hamilton '42 
Kermit Lansner '42 
Walter Wager '44 
Byron Dobell '47 
John McDermott '54 


Published by Columbia College ^ issue 

Columbia University 

New York, N. Y. 10027 Tale of Two Weeks. 3 

for Around the Quads . 10 

Alumni and Friends of Columbia College CC Under Siege. 46 

Address all editorial communications to: Curriculum in Transition .. 58 

Columbia College Today Roar Lion Roar. 64 

400 West 118th Street Talk of the Alumni . 75 

New York, N. Y. 10027 Aviation's Flying Start. 85 

Telephone (212) 280-3701 Another Columbia — Another War. 90 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE Alumni Authors. 98 

founded in 1754 Obituaries. 101 

is the undergraduate liberal arts college No News from My Lai. 104 


of 2,700 men in 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COVER PHOTO BY SID SATTLER 


















*0 more KILLING 

$ 

F'EACE NOVS 



i 


Li 



























TALE OF TWO WEEKS 


On January 14, 1970, a little-noticed article on an 
inside page of the New York Times proclaimed that 
the days of mass campus disturbances appeared to be 
over. Headlined “Student Disorder Found Past Crest," 
the story catalogued the reasons for the decline in 
disruptive activity, among them the fact that environ¬ 
mental pollution had replaced Vietnam as the favor¬ 
ite target of militant protesters. 

The piece was premature. On April 30, Richard 
Nixon told the nation that he was sending American 
troops into Cambodia. With that announcement, the 
President achieved overnight what S.D.S. rhetoric had 
failed all year to accomplish: the disruption of normal 
University functions and the mobilization of large 
segments of the Columbia community—students, fac¬ 
ulty and administration—in a massive effort to end 
the war. 

The fateful speech was made on a Thursday. Over 
the weekend, University President Andrew Cordier 
met with students and faculty members to plan a 
response. As a result of their deliberations, a huge 
rally took place on Low Plaza at noon the following 
Monday. The University remained officially open, but 
all who wished were excused from classes to hear 
Dr. Cordier and other speakers denounce the latest 
extension of the fighting and call for military disen¬ 
gagement from Indochina. 

Even as Dr. Cordier spoke, the rumor of the Kent 
State slayings drifted through the crowd. By nightfall 
the news was confirmed, although the exact toll re¬ 
mained uncertain. That evening. University Senate in 
an emergency session voted overwhelmingly to con¬ 
demn the Cambodian invasion and recommend the 
suspension of classes for two days as an expression of 
"shock and grief." "The Senate understands," the 
resolution continued, that there would be some 
whose consciences would lead them to stay away 
from classes even after the two-day period had 
ended. Kent State was not mentioned; its full impact 
would not be felt uptil the following day. 

Others were active also. Student groups from dif¬ 
ferent University schools formed a Strike Coordina¬ 
ting Committee, to organize strike activities and work 
for the implementation of the "three national de¬ 
mands": immediate withdrawal of troops from 
Southeast Asia; an end to repression at home, in¬ 
cluding a halt to persecution of the Black Panthers; 
and the cessation of University cooperation with the 
war effort. Representatives from S.D.S., D4M, and the 
Third World Coalition sat on the steering committee 


to create, at least for the time being, the semblance 
of a united front. More moderate students from the 
College and Barnard founded Action for Peace, the 
principal purpose of which was to drum up support 
for the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment to the Mili¬ 
tary Procurement Authorization Bill. The amendment 
would cut off all funds for military operations in Indo¬ 
china after December 1970, unless Congress declares 
war. Working out of the offices of the Community 
Service Council in Ferris Booth Hall, but relying en¬ 
tirely on private funds, volunteers flooded the city 
with petitions favoring the measure. On Tuesday, 
their first full day of operation, they collected an esti¬ 
mated 35,000 signatures. Both organizations main¬ 
tained contacts with peace groups on other cam¬ 
puses, as the protest movement swelled into a nation¬ 
wide strike which, by the end of the week, would 
cripple some 300 colleges and universities. 

Meanwhile, students thronged Wollman Auditor¬ 
ium to demand the closing of the University, and an 
ad hoc faculty group voted 29-4 for an all-week strike. 

As chance would have it, radical attorney William 
Kunstler had accepted earlier in the year an invitation 
to speak at McMillin Theater Tuesday evening. Now, 
with the strike in its first day, an overflow audience 
packed the Theater to hear him. When the crowd 
proved too big to fit into McMillin, latecomers were 
directed to Ferris Booth, where the proceedings were 
broadcast over loudspeakers. After students from 
Kent State and the Third World Coalition addressed 
the gathering, Mr. Kunstler brought his listeners to 
their feet with a moving appeal to all present to shed 
their differences and work together for "a national 
cessation of all activities," including commence¬ 
ments. As he spoke, nearly 100 members of the 
Third World Coalition were peacefully occupying the 
East Asian Institute on the fifth floor of Kent Hall. 
The Institute, they charged, was largely responsible 
for the exploitation of non-white peoples around the 
world. 

When the meeting ended, some 2,000 men and 
women marched up Amsterdam Avenue to City Col¬ 
lege, where a group of students had seized several 
buildings. Chanting "Avenge Kent State!" and "1-2- 
3-4, Free the Panthers, Stop the War!" the demonstra¬ 
tors swarmed over the occupied portion of the 
campus in a display of support for the rebels. They 
returned to Columbia, however, after receiving a re¬ 
port (which proved false) that police had taken ad¬ 
vantage of their absence to clear out Kent Hall. 


3 









At this point the united front be¬ 
gan to crack. Militants from S.D.S. and 
D4M tried to storm Low Library as 
a gesture of solidarity with the stu¬ 
dents in Kent, and actually smashed 
the main door of the building in their 
attempt to enter. They were deterred, 
however, by the protests of the major¬ 
ity of demonstrators, who chanted 
"Don't do it!" and "Save Our Strike!" 
A few moderates dragged the radicals 
forcibly from the entrances. (Later, 
the University lodged charges against 
four of the militants who allegedly in¬ 
flicted damage on the administration 
building. The combined charges, 
which involve felonies, carry a maxi¬ 
mum penalty of five years in prison, 
and represent the severest measures 
ever taken against Columbia dissi¬ 
dents.) An impromptu meeting fol¬ 
lowed in Wollman Auditorium. There, 


an S.D.S. spokesman defended the 
actions of his group, and attempted to 
distinguish them from "trashing," or 
the indiscriminate destruction of 
property. He was followed, however, 
by a speaker from the Third World 
Coalition, who drew cheers from the 
audience by denouncing the white 
radicals and declaring that the Third 
Worlders wanted "mass support, not 
mob support." 

On Wednesday, the second day 
of the strike, the College faculty 
voted by a slim margin to allow all 
students the option of receiving a 
grade of "Pass," "Incomplete," or 
"Absent" instead of a letter grade. 
Students who had satisfactorily 
completed their course work could 
elect to take a "Pass," while others 
would be assigned an INC or an ABS. 
The measure went beyond resolutions 


adopted earlier in the week by Uni¬ 
versity Senate and the College Com¬ 
mittee on Instruction, both of which 
recommended that the Pass-Fail op¬ 
tion be restricted to seniors. Also, a 
number of faculty members, many of 
them with tenure, met under the 
chairmanship of English professor 
Frederick Dupee to declare their sup¬ 
port of the three national demands. 
The group, which called itself the 
Columbia Faculty Peace Action Com¬ 
mittee, announced its intention to es¬ 
tablish a permanent "academic lobby" 
in Washington to work for passage of 
antiwar legislation. Later in the day, 
the Third World Coalition abandoned 
Kent Hall and held a meeting in Woll¬ 
man Auditorium, at which plans were 
made to picket buildings for the re¬ 
mainder of the week. Elsewhere, 
militants trooped over to the West 


Thomas Jefferson thought that 20 years was a 
long enough interval between revolutions. 

"Jeff lives," on the walls of the Journalism Students throng Low Plaza to hear President Cordier and 

building, refers to one of the Kent State victims. other speakers on the first day of the strike. 



4 





















































Side Highway and halted rush hour 
traffic for twenty minutes. Violence 
erupted briefly when they returned 
to campus, as police and protesters 
clashed outside the gates at 116th 
Street and Broadway. Several students 
were mauled by the officers, and eight 
were arrested. One policeman suf¬ 
fered a broken nose in the melee, 
while four demonstrators were treated 
for cuts and bruises. 

During the two days that classes 
were cancelled, striking students were 
joined intermittently by campus work¬ 
ers, many of whom remained away 
from their jobs to participate in the 
moratorium and protest the Univer¬ 
sity's refusal to grant them time off 
with full pay. The University insisted 
that any work stoppages be charged 
against vacations. 

Classes were scheduled to re¬ 


open Thursday, and President Cordier 
reminded teachers that they were ex¬ 
pected to be in their classrooms or 
make "suitable alternate arrange¬ 
ments." But the strike leaders willed 
differently. On Thursday morning, stu¬ 
dents in red armbands milled around 
the entrances to buildings, physically 
barring those who wished to enter, 
while painted slogans and symbols— 
principally the red clenched fist—ap¬ 
peared along the walls. The strike was 
widely effective, not only in the Col¬ 
lege but elsewhere on the Morning- 
side campus. Radicals were joined on 
the picket lines by more moderate stu¬ 
dents who had never before taken part 
in a demonstration. "Issues change, 
people change" explained one of 
them, who not long ago had regarded 
militant protesters with scorn. Even 
the football team, traditionally the 


bastion of cleancut conservatism, 
voted overwhelmingly to skip the lone 
Spring practice session allowed under 
Ivy League rules to express its support 
for the three national demands. Other 
teams cancelled athletic events. 

On Friday, after College and Uni¬ 
versity administrators attended a 
memorial service in St. Paul's Chapel 
for the Kent State Four, the College 
Faculty met in an informal session 
and voted, 89-25, to call upon Presi¬ 
dent Cordier to cancel all College 
classes and examinations for the re¬ 
mainder of the academic year. The 
resolution asked that the action be 
taken to protest the extension of the 
war and the Kent State killings. It was 
carried only after a spirited and at 
times emotional debate, during which 
one speaker who opposed the mea¬ 
sure was heckled from the floor until 



THOUGHTS AND DEEDS: The sign seems to 
exhort the Thinker to abandon his meditations 
for social action. He was one of the few in 
evidence on campus who did not. 


UNANIMITY: Carman Hall freshmen get together to drape 
banner across the top two stories of Columbia's newest 
dormitory. 


5 











he finally sat down. Many who voted 
in the minority professed themselves 
horrified by the invasion and the 
shootings, but objected to committing 
the College as an institution on a ques¬ 
tion of national policy. After the vote 
was taken, Dean of the College Carl F. 
Hovde announced that a formal meet¬ 
ing could be convened to consider the 
question if enough faculty members 
requested one. Nearly forty did, and 
a new meeting was scheduled for the 
following Tuesday. It was anticipated 
—prematurely, as it turned out—that 
the faculty at that time would ratify 
officially the action taken at the ad 
hoc gathering. 

Militant picketing went on, pre¬ 
cipitating some angry exchanges be¬ 
tween the strikers and those shut out 
of offices and libraries. Most buildings 
remained effectively closed, but a 


number of teachers met their classes 
at their homes and on the lawns. 

Action for Peace, buoyed by con¬ 
tributions from sympathetic faculty 
members and administrators, con¬ 
tinued to gain momentum, as an es¬ 
timated 700 volunteers engaged in a 
variety of activities. Some made tele¬ 
vision appearances, while others pre¬ 
pared to go to Washington to lobby 
with key Congressmen. A speakers' 
committee arranged to supply lec¬ 
turers for local high schools, civic 
groups, and street rallies, and mem¬ 
bers dispatched "Middle America" 
packages, containing Hatfield-Mc- 
Govern petitions with covering in¬ 
structions, to friends on distant 
campuses. But the organization con¬ 
tinued to devote most of its energies 
to working for the nomination of anti¬ 
war candidates in forthcoming pri¬ 


maries and collecting signatures for 
the petition in the metropolitan area. 
A busload of students journeyed to 
Connecticut to campaign for the Rev. 
Joseph Duffy, who was trying to unseat 
incumbent Senator Thomas Dodd. 
Others remained in New York to as¬ 
sist youthful House aspirant Peter 
Eikenberry in his uphill battle with 
veteran Congressman John Rooney. 
Basketball player Bob Gailus '71, who 
hails from Pennsylvania, called a 
meeting of his fellow-Pennsylvanians 
to plan ways of helping Norval Reese, 
now bidding for the Senate. Mean¬ 
while, the petition drive gathered 
signatures at a rate of 30,000 a day, as 
volunteers solicited passers-by in the 
financial district, in front of movie 
theaters, and at Lincoln Center, where 
they appeared in evening dress. Even 
as they worked busily for passage of 


Blockade runner, excluded by picketers, passes 
papers through the bars of the window to the 
Dean's Office in Hamilton Hall. A skeleton force 
of teachers and administrators slipped into the 
building at 8 a.m., before the strikers were 
up and about. 


(Top) Chanting students march up Amsterdam Avenue to 
City College following speech by attorney William 
Kunstler. (Bottom) Pickets surround the entrance to Kent 
Hall, home of the Journalism School. Journalism was one 
of several buildings closed by strikers. 



6 


COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR 





















the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment, 
leaders of the group looked ahead to 
expanded activities over the summer, 
when they hope students will join the 
campaign staffs of peace candidates in 
their home districts. "We don't want 
this thing to end in three days or three 
weeks," explained a spokesman. The 
organization is still desperate for 
money; the spokesman estimated that 
it was spending a thousand dollars a 
day and taking in only 700 dollars a 
day in contributions. Checks can be 
mailed to Action for Peace, 311 Ferris 
Booth Hall. 

Over the weekend, protesters 
from Columbia joined 100,000 other 
demonstrators at a mass protest meet¬ 
ing in Washington. Dean Hovde at¬ 
tended the rally, together with about 
fifteen other faculty members and ad¬ 
ministrators. The group, which trav¬ 


elled to Washington in chartered 
busses, carried a banner reading "Co¬ 
lumbia Students, Faculty and Deans 
For Peace." Several professors re¬ 
mained in Washington over the week¬ 
end to lobby with different Congress¬ 
men. 

The following Monday, May 11, 
about 1200 students and teachers 
gathered for a noon convocation on 
Low Plaza, to hear President Cordier 
and other speakers, and "vote" on a 
resolution offered by English profes¬ 
sor Robert Bone, of Teachers' College. 
The resolution, which was drawn up 
by representatives from the Strike Co¬ 
ordinating Committee and Faculty 
Peace Action and endorsed by Presi¬ 
dent Cordier, supported the three na¬ 
tional demands and announced that 
University facilities would be utilized 
in coming months "for effective anti¬ 


war activity." In a thinly-veiled slap 
at obstructive picketers, the resolu¬ 
tion concluded: "We choose these 
priorities freely, and will respect the 
right of others to disagree." 

The motion was put to the crowd 
for a voice vote about midway 
through the meeting. But successive 
mass rallies had reached the point of 
diminishing returns, and the audience, 
which was disappointingly small, re¬ 
sponded with only a few faint ayes. 
Meanwhile, hecklers from S.D.S. and 
the Third World Coalition had gath¬ 
ered around the platform and were 
drowning out the speakers by chant¬ 
ing what the New York Times calls a 
barnyard epithet. At one point, the 
Third Worlders rushed the platform 
and attempted to seize the micro¬ 
phones. This resulted in several 
scuffles with student marshals, in 


(Top) The curious gape at a hole in the side of Alma Mater, 
blown apart by a homemade bomb in the early hours of 
Thursday, May 74. The damage has been repaired. 

(Bottom) Peace signs hang from the ceiling of the 
Community Service Council office, headquarters of 
Action for Peace. 


Dean of the College Carl F. Hovde glances 
through a radical newspaper during a quiet 
moment at the May 15 Washington peace rally. 



7 











which members of the Coalition were 
seconded in spite of themselves by 
SDSers. 

On Tuesday morning, the College 
faculty met to consider in a formal 
session the proposal which it had en¬ 
acted the preceding Friday. To the 
surprise of many, it virtually reversed 
itself. Although it endorsed the Uni¬ 
versity Senate resolution condemning 
the Cambodian invasion, it declined 
to affirm the motion which had sought 
cancellation of classes and exams in 
protest against the war and the Kent 
State killings. Instead, it resolved that 
the passions engendered by these two 
events had made it "unrealistic to 
carry on classes as usual"—an empty 
gesture, since the semester was all but 
over—and made no mention of final 
exams. Moreover, it adopted, 63-49, 


an amendment offered by Associate 
Professor of Sociology Allan A. Silver 
which called upon the administration 
and University Senate "to condemn 
physical interposition and violence 
preventing access to offices, class¬ 
rooms, and libraries, and to take ac¬ 
tion to end these practices." After the 
amendment had carried, several pro¬ 
fessors expressed concern that it 
might be construed as an invitation 
to summon police. 

Observers attributed the volte- 
face partly to the fact that instructors 
were not permitted to vote at the 
formal meeting, as they had done on 
Friday, and partly to a "backlash" 
among the faculty against violent pro¬ 
test activities, triggered by several in¬ 
cidents in which professors were al¬ 
legedly jostled or even struck. More¬ 


over, the composition of the picketers 
had gradually altered, from a cross- 
section of the student body—includ¬ 
ing many moderates—to what Dean 
Hovde described at the start of the 
session as a hard core of extremists. 
Whether through fear of reprisals, or 
a growing realization of their isola¬ 
tion from the majority of students, the 
pickets vanished the following day. 
Classes ended officially on Thursday, 
and the campus—or rather, those indi¬ 
viduals who had opted for letter 
grades—girded for exams. 

On Friday, University Senate 
voted by a 57-18 margin to recom¬ 
mend that classes be recessed for ten 
days between October 24 and Novem¬ 
ber 2 to permit students and faculty 
members to engage in political activ¬ 
ity. The proposal, which was initiated 


WAR AGAINST RACISM: Students established 
headquarters in Philosophy Hall lobby to work on the 
second national demand: an end to repression at home. 

Speaker's platform on Low Library steps provides a 
makeshift bulletin board for assorted strike notices. 


They were ejected by security police late one evening in a 
little-publicized incident. 



BONNIE FREER 























by two students and co-sponsored by 
Dean Hovde and several tenured pro¬ 
fessors, will be acted upon by the 
Trustees later this month. Princeton, 
Stanford, Johns Hopkins and Cornell 
have already declared similar recesses. 

Commencement Day, June 2, 
dawned like many Commencement 
Days of the past. Rows of seats had 
been set out for graduates and their 
guests, the walls had been scrubbed 
clean of slogans, and blue bunting 
hung from the buildings which, only 
a few days earlier, had displayed on 
their exteriors the clenched fist and 
other symbols of the strike. 

But there were differences. Trus¬ 
tee M. Moran Weston '30, delivering 
the invocation, quoted from a song of 
Bob Dylan's and proclaimed, "In 
these extraordinary times, no-one 


dares to conduct business as usual, 
least of all here." And when outgoing 
President Cordier rose to read his fi¬ 
nal Commencement address, in which 
he declared that "we have never had 
a better generation of youth," about 
300 students, many of them bearing 
picket signs, walked out of the as¬ 
semblage and headed for St. Paul's 
Chapel, where a "counter-commence¬ 
ment" was held. There, joined by 
some 500 parents and guests, they 
heard Paul Starr '70, former editor- 
in-chief of Spectator, remind them 
that Thomas Jefferson had advocated 
a revolution every 20 years, and John 
F. Kennedy had warned that those 
who make peaceful change impos¬ 
sible make violent change inevitable. 
Columbia, Starr said, is not a bene¬ 


volent institution, but one which is 
deeply involved in many of the evils 
—war research, anti-unionism—of the 
society to which it belongs. He was 
followed by Boston University pro¬ 
fessor Howard Zinn, who maintained 
that the United States has always been 
a racist and imperialist country. "We 
haven't strayed from the kindly hu¬ 
mane path," he argued. "When the 
nation is at its most normal it exhibits 
all that is wrong with western civiliza¬ 
tion." 

Others held forth briefly. Then, as 
a speaker recited the preamble to the 
Declaration of Independence, the 
seniors walked forth from St. Paul's 
into the troubled world of which Co¬ 
lumbia is, in so many ways, a micro¬ 
cosm. 



9 





























PROGRESS 

REPORT 

It has been an embattled year for 
University Senate, launched with high 
hopes as the most important reform 
to come out of the '68 rebellion. 
Spurred on by student members, Sen¬ 
ate often found itself taking stands 
on national as well as strictly academic 
issues, including some which were di¬ 
rectly or indirectly related to the prin¬ 
cipal causes of the strike of two years 
ago. 

Thus, at the start of the spring 
semester, Senate sought to lay to rest 
once and for all the spectre of 
defense-related research. Its resolu¬ 
tion, adopted on January 16, prohibits 
the University from entering into any 
research or teaching contracts which 
permit an outside party to censor pub¬ 
lications or dictate course content, or 
determine, on the basis of political or 
religious affiliation, race, color, or sex, 


who may participate in the project. 
Moreover, the University was forbid¬ 
den to conclude agreements which 
would require it to handle or transmit 
classified materials, involve itself in 
the processing of security clearances, 
or control access to information "in 
accordance with any security regula¬ 
tion." The measure sets up machinery 
for recognizing exceptions, and does 
not apply to members of the Univer¬ 
sity community who sign contracts as 
individuals. 

One of the Senate's more spec¬ 
tacular episodes revolved around the 
jailing of 21 leaders of the Black Pan¬ 
ther Party, held on conspiracy charges 
in $100,000 bond. Because New York 
District Attorney Frank Hogan '24 is a 
Columbia trustee, and because Co¬ 
lumbia has frequently been accused 
of indifference to blacks who were 
dislocated because of its expansion 
program (this was, of course, another 


factor in the '68 rebellion), campus 
radicals argued that it was up to the 
University to provide bail. On Febru¬ 
ary 27, 150 protesters marched into a 
Senate meeting just after it began, 
chanting slogans and scrawling signs 
on the blackboard. In a hasty and 
confused voice vote, the Senate 
adopted a motion to adjourn. Some 
senators were on their feet and 
headed for the door as they called 
out their ayes. Shortly afterward, the 
Senate Executive Committee decided 
to transfer Senate meetings off cam¬ 
pus to the Men's Faculty Club, and to 
institute a system of admission tickets, 
issued in advance on a first-come, first- 
served basis to spectators who pro¬ 
duced University identification. 

The Panther issue returned to 
haunt the Senate just two weeks later. 
Faris Bouhafa '70, a College senator 
with a flair for flamboyant rhetoric, 
offered a resolution criticizing the 


10 


































$100,000 bail figure as a violation of 
Constitutional and statutory guaran¬ 
tees, and calling upon the administra¬ 
tion to "commit itself to devising a 
method by which the University might 
aid in raising money toward the Black 
Panther bail fund." Proponents em¬ 
phasized that nothing in the language 
suggested that Columbia should ap- 
propiate any cash itself. In the emo¬ 
tional debate which followed, oppo¬ 
nents of the motion rose, one after 
another, to protest that they too be¬ 
lieved, as individuals, that the Pan¬ 
thers were victims of police lawless¬ 
ness, or that bail was too high. Several 
expressed willingness to contribute 
out of their private pockets to a legal 
defense fund. But in spite of wide¬ 
spread sympathy for the imprisoned 
militants, most senators shied away 
from recommending that the Univer¬ 
sity act in its institutional capacity. By 
a 47-27 margin, they opted instead for 
a milder proposal, put forward as an 
amendment by chemistry professor 
Julian Miller. The Miller motion ac¬ 
cused the government of several spe¬ 
cific acts of repression, including the 
imposition of excessive bail in the 
case of the Panthers. It declined, how¬ 


ever, to call upon the administration 
to do anything except "vigilantly to 
protect freedom of expression within 
the University." It further urged gov¬ 
ernment officials "to reverse an omi¬ 
nous trend in national affairs." 

There was a dramatic moment 
during the meeting, when word was 
passed among the delegates that 
several hundred demonstrators had 
seized Uris Hall in a display of sup¬ 
port for the Panthers. An even more 
dramatic scene followed its adjourn¬ 
ment, immediately after the Miller 
amendment was carried. As President 
Andrew Cordier gavelled angrily for 
silence, and other senators shouted 
"sit down" or "shut up," Bouhafa 
raced to the east window, jerked open 
the shades, and gestured toward Har¬ 
lem. "Well, you didn't want to make 
a moral judgment," he shouted, re¬ 
ferring to the Senate's refusal to call 
for political action. "Well, gentlemen, 
there is your moral judgment!" With 
these words, which were almost 
drowned out by catcalls from other 
delegates, he stalked out of the room. 

Subsequently, a faculty senator 
submitted a resolution, obviously 
aimed at Bouhafa, holding that elec¬ 


tion to the Senate "does not bestow 
upon any member the privilege to be 
a boor and a bore—undisciplined, un¬ 
gracious, and unkind." Before Senate 
could act, Bouhafa himself resigned, 
denouncing the organization as "a 
magnificent hoax." (In his peroration 
following the adoption of the Miller 
statement, he had referred to the Sen¬ 
ate as "this damn body.") Bouhafa 
blamed his resignation on a University 
decision to try him before a tribunal 
for allegedly disrupting a class con¬ 
ducted by economics professor Har¬ 
old Barger. He did not, he said, want 
the outcome to be influenced by his 
status as student senator. 

Later in the spring, Senate sought 
to add Columbia's name to the grow¬ 
ing list of schools which were voting 
their General Motors stock in support 
of Ralph Nader's "Project for Cor¬ 
porate Responsibility," which sought 
to reduce environmental pollution 
caused by G.M. products. (This was 
shortly after an extensive Spectator 
campaign had resulted in the publica¬ 
tion, for the first time, of Columbia's 
investment portfolio.) In an unprece¬ 
dented action, however, the trustees 
rejected the Senate resolution. In- 


IN STATELY CONCLAVE MET: Dr. Andrew Cordier presides at a meeting of University Senate. 
Prof. Wm. Theodore de Bary, chairman of the Senate Executive Committee, is seated at his left. 



11 











Students march toward the Business School after 
hearing Abby Hoffman, Jean Genet, and other speakers 
on Friday, March 13. Several hundred occupied 
the building briefly. 


stead, they voted their stock with 
management—the customary policy of 
institutional investors—on two issues 
raised in the Senate's proposal and 
abstained on a third. The purpose of 
the abstention, they said, was to "put 
General Motors on notice that it 
should seek to continue to expand its 
efforts" in auto safety and cleaning 
up the air. And when President Rich¬ 
ard Nixon sent troops into Cambodia, 
Senate took the lead in denouncing 
the invasion, calling for a two-day 
suspension of classes, and recom¬ 
mending the establishment of a pass- 
fail option for seniors. (The College 
faculty later extended this option to 
all undergraduates.) 

Bouhafa's showmanship com¬ 
manded headlines, but ultimately 
Senate must be judged on its conduct 
of daily business, much of it routine 
and unspectacular. Reaction so far is 
varied and often tentative. According 
to The New York Times of May 24, 
Senate has succeeded in shifting the 
battleground of liberals and radicals— 
the only two major contending forces 
at Morningside—from the campus to 
the legislative halls. The Senate, it said, 
has worked as a "safety valve" which 
has "often averted violent confronta¬ 
tion," and there was "overwhelming 
belief that it should continue and be 
strengthened." Spectator was less 
charitable. Charging in a feature ar¬ 
ticle last March that the legislature is 
"dominated by conservative senior 
faculty members," the campus daily 
declared that "most undergraduates 
appear to have lost confidence in 
University Senate as an effective 
governing body." The writer reported 
particular disillusionment with the 
committees, which are supposed to 
hammer out reports to serve as a 
basis for future Senate action. "Many," 
he complained, "have not yet em¬ 
barked on the substantive long-range 
planning which is their principal func¬ 
tion." However, the Senate's de¬ 
fenders, of whom there seem to be 
more than the article suggests, warn 
against what one called "premature 
judgments based upon inadequate in¬ 
formation." 

It is early in the game for defini¬ 
tive judgments. The only verdict which 
can be pronounced at the present 
time is, as the Scottish jurors say, "Not 
proved." 


ON THE LEFT 

S.D.S. attempted during the past 
year to make up in militancy what it 
lacked in numbers. Although it drew 
large and sympathetic crowds to its 
major rallies, its regular meetings 
were sparsely attended, and the events 
of last May —the period of the stu¬ 
dent strike — underscored its isolation 
from the mainstream of even leftist 
campus politics. 

The failure of S.D.S. to attract a 
mass following was attributed by most 
observers to two developments. One 
was the split last summer in the ranks 
of the old S.D.S. organization, when 
many of its leaders, including some of 
the moving spirits of the '68 Columbia 
strike, broke away to form the Rev¬ 
olutionary Youth Movement (RYM), 
also known as the Weathermen. The 
other SDSers, who are closely identi¬ 
fied with the Progressive Labor Party 
(P.L.P.), included the present members 
of the Columbia chapter. For a time, 
both factions claimed to be the only 
legitimate S.D.S., although by now the 
label is firmly associated with the ele¬ 
ment of which P.L.P. is a part. The dif¬ 
ferences between the two are both 
ideological and tactical. Ideologically, 
P.L.P. calls itself Marxist-Leninist. It be¬ 
lieves in building a revolutionary alli¬ 
ance of students and workers, and 


criticizes the Black Panthers for their 
willingness to work with bourgeoise 
elements in the black community. 
RYM, on the other hand, condemns 
the workers as beneficiaries of im¬ 
perialism, and places its hopes princi¬ 
pally in the nation's high school stu¬ 
dents. P.L.P. operates in the open. 
Though willing to employ revolution¬ 
ary violence, it rejects isolated acts of 
terrorism and vandalism. The Weath¬ 
ermen have gone underground, and 
are generally believed to be responsi¬ 
ble for at least some of the recent 
bombings which have swept New 
York City. 

A second major development, af¬ 
fecting upperclassmen, was the re¬ 
forms initiated by the administration 
in the wake of the '68 strike. These 
impressed different students in dia¬ 
metrically opposite ways, but with ap¬ 
proximately the same end result. Some 
believed that Columbia was attempt¬ 
ing in good faith to institute meaning¬ 
ful changes involving broader partici¬ 
pation in University government. In 
their eyes, the '68 revolution had been 
largely successful, and radical politics 
were no longer necessary. Others, who 
had likewise placed great hopes in the 
spring rebellion of two years ago, dis¬ 
missed devices such as University Sen¬ 
ate as hollow shams. Many of them 
also turned away from radical political 
activity, not because it had accom- 


12 











plished its purpose, but because it 
had proved futile. 

In addition, drugs, which are gen¬ 
erally associated in the public's mind 
with radicalism, are more often an 
alternative to it. They are, in fact, the 
ultimate expression of introversion 
and non-involvement. There are indi¬ 
cations that a drug culture is slowly 
replacing the radical culture, espe¬ 
cially among younger students, some 
of whom have been "into" drugs since 
high school. 

In spite of these problems, S.D.S. 
has refused to give up the ghost. Its 
principal issue throughout most of the 
year revolved around the death, some 
13 months ago, of black custodial 
worker Charles Johnson. Mr. Johnson 
was killed on the job when he stuck 
his head through the broken window 
of a Hartley Hall elevator door as 
the elevator was descending. S.D.S. 
claimed that the window had been 
broken for five days, and that John¬ 
son's death was attributable to the 
University's negligence in failing to 
make timely repairs. The University 
maintained that the window was 
smashed only two or three hours be¬ 
fore the accident. 


Columbia continued to pay Mr. 
Johnson's salary to his widow and 
five children, pending final disposition 
of the case by the Workmen's Com¬ 
pensation Board. This, originally, was 
$87 a week, but was later raised to 
$100.40, in keeping with a salary in¬ 
crease awarded to Mr. Johnson's co¬ 
workers about a month after his death. 
S.D.S. charged that the amount was 
inadequate, in view of the fact that 
the dead man had held two jobs. 
Moreover, the radicals claimed, the 
checks arrived irregularly, or else con¬ 
tained clerical mistakes which made it 
impossible for the family to cash 
them. Instead, they called upon Co¬ 
lumbia to pay the widow $10,000 a 
year. That, according to the Bureau 
of Labor Statistics, is the minimum 
amount which a family with five chil¬ 
dren needs in order to live decently 
in New York City. Officials argue, 
however, that Columbia cannot 
undertake unilaterally to reshape the 
labor market in which it operates. "It 
would be nice if we could pay every¬ 
one $10,000," observed one dryly. 
"Trouble is, there'd be no money for 
anything else." 

The Workmen's Compensation 


Board finally issued a ruling early this 
spring. Its award included a lump sum 
payment of $3,591 to cover the period 
when the case was before the agency. 
Columbia will assert no claim for re¬ 
imbursement of the moneys which it 
paid to the family during that time, al¬ 
though, according to a spokesman, it 
would be legally entitled to do so. The 
University will continue to send the 
deceased worker's paycheck to his 
widow until July 10, 1970, when peri¬ 
odic weekly payments—in the amount 
of $61.93—will begin to come in from 
the Board. 

Last October the radicals marched 
on Dodge Hall to confront University 
officials in order to press their demands 
for greater compensation. A second 
demonstration took place in the same 
building a month later. By this time 
S.D.S. had new demands, growing out 
of the dismissal of Benjamin Castro, 
a Spanish dishwasher, for "incompati¬ 
bility" (his command of English was 
said to be insufficient). According to 
S.D.S., however, he was fired because 
of his union activities.The demonstra¬ 
tors stood in the hallway of Dodge 
and began chanting. When the chant¬ 
ing increased in volume, Proctor Wil- 


D4Mers make like Indians on the warpath. Maxi-coated young lady with a notebook is 

covering the tribal rites for Spectator. 



13 








THE MORNING AFTER: Hamilton Hall bears the scars of a night of "trashing. 


“SEATTLE .. . BOOM!" Abby Hoffman, his locks shorn during his prison stay, gives the 
weather report and preaches better living through chemistry. 



14 


COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR 









liam Kahn stepped forward and de¬ 
clared the demonstration illegal under 
the Interim Rules. Some brief scuffling 
erupted, involving Chief of Security 
Adam DiNisco, Safety Director War¬ 
ren Munroe, and several students. As a 
result, five of the demonstrators were 
ordered to appear before a University 
Tribunal. In addition, criminal charges 
were lodged against two of them: An¬ 
drew Kaslow 72 and Ed Goldman 71, 
both of whom were accused of harass¬ 
ment, or simple assault. A third dem¬ 
onstrator, Michael Golash, a non-stu¬ 
dent, was also charged. Kaslow and 
Goldman were utlimately acquitted, 
but Golash was convicted. His five-day 
sentence is currently being appealed. 

The tribunal hearing, on Decem¬ 
ber 11, was recessed when a tribunal 
member objected to a huge banner 
which the defendants had draped 
across the wall, urging the largely 
sympathetic audience to support strik¬ 
ing General Electric workers. A second 
hearing was set for January, with spec¬ 
tators excluded. The accused, how¬ 
ever, refused to appear at closed 
proceedings, and were placed under 
indefinite suspension. 

Now, in addition to compensa¬ 
tion for the Johnsons and reinstate¬ 
ment for Castro, S.D.S. clamored 
persistently for an open tribunal for 
the five students. In February, a mass 
meeting was held in Harkness Audi¬ 
torium, at which the mother of the 
deceased custodial worker was the 
featured speaker. Over 300 attended. 
Several days later, on February 19, 
demonstrators packed the lobby of 
Hamilton Hall to confront Dean of 
the College Carl Hovde. Dean Hovde, 
to the surprise of many, stepped from 
his office and read a prepared state¬ 
ment, explaining and defending the 
University's actions. While he read, 
and during the question period which 
followed, he was interrupted repeat¬ 
edly by insults and laughter. (An S.D.S. 
member later defended this technique 
as one of "de-mystification." "Before 
you can get students to stand up to 
authority figures," he argued, "you 
have to show that they're human, and 
that the sky won't fall in if you talk 
to them the same way you could talk 
to anyone else." The most effective 
way to accomplish this, he suggested, 
is with ridicule.) 

Meanwhile, one of the five—Kas¬ 


low—broke away from the others and 
submitted to a closed tribunal. At the 
last moment, his hearing was opened 
to the public, but attendance was 
sparse, and the sophomore was placed 
under censure for two semesters. This 
meant that any new offense would re¬ 
sult in his expulsion. The others, how¬ 
ever, held out for an open trial, and 
at length their tenacity was rewarded. 
Their tribunal, which had ordered a 
closed hearing after the banner inci¬ 
dent in December, relented. On Fri¬ 
day, March 6,150 vociferously partisan 
spectators packed a room in the Math¬ 
ematics building to listen to the Uni¬ 
versity present its charges. Both the 
audience and the defendants sub¬ 
jected prosecution witnesses to sus¬ 
tained heckling, while tribunal chair¬ 
man Ralph Allemano 70 declined to 
intervene. The four were acquitted on 
all counts for lack of evidence. Later, 
Kaslow appealed his conviction be¬ 
cause of the conflicting results, and 
won a reduction in sentence from 
censure to probation, which is a 
milder form of warning. 

One reaction to the proceedings— 
and to a similarly noisy hearing for 
black students the following day— 
came two weeks later, when the Joint 
Committee on Disciplinary Affairs, 
which supervises all tribunals, limited 
the number of spectators at future 
trials to 25. Professor of Italian John 
Nelson, a member of the J.C.D.A., re¬ 
signed from that body, complaining in 
an open letter that various tribunals 
had been subjected to repeated "out¬ 
rages." 

For the next month or so, the spot¬ 
light shifted from S.D.S. to another, 
more strident group: the December 
Fourth Movement, or D4M, named for 
the day that Chicago policemen shot 
to death Black Panther leader Fred 
Hampton. D4M, whose principal rev¬ 
olutionary tactic is "trashing"—that is, 
hurling rocks, paint, stink-bombs and 
other objects through windows and 
against buildings, preferably at night- 
mounted a drive to compel the Uni¬ 
versity to provide bail for jailed Pan¬ 
thers in New York City. Columbia's 
responsibility to do so, it was argued, 
proceeded from two circumstances: 
the University's allegedly racist prac¬ 
tices, especially in pursuing its expan¬ 
sion program at the expense of ethnic 
minorities in the neighborhood; and 


the fact that New York District Attor¬ 
ney Frank Hogan '24, who sits on the 
Board of Trustees, has been instru¬ 
mental in the prosecution of the black 
militants. D4M leaders vowed to make 
Columbia pay one way or another: in 
bail funds, or in money laid out to 
replace damaged property on campus. 
D4M was disparaged by S.D.S., which 
sees little purpose in indiscriminate 
destruction, and representatives of 
the two groups scuffled occasionally 
at rallies. 

D4M activities included the dis¬ 
ruption, on February 27, of a University 
Senate meeting, forcing cancellation 
of the session, and leading the Senate 
to impose controversial controls on 
the admission of visitors. On Friday, 
March 13, as thousands of high school 
students thronged the campus to at¬ 
tend the annual Columbia Scholastic 
Press Association convention, D4M 
sponsored a mass rally on Low Plaza, 
addressed by Yippie Abbie Hoffman, 
French playwright Jean Genet, and 
Afeni Shakur, an accused Panther who 
was free on bond. At the same time, 
the Students Afro-American Society 
held its own demonstration near the 
Sundial, but declined to associate it¬ 
self with the white radicals. When the 
D4M rally ended, and while University 
Senate was still debating a resolution 
calling upon the administration to 
help raise money for the Panthers who 
remained in prison, some 400 demon¬ 
strators marched into Uris Hall and 
remained for several hours. Later that 
evening protesters roamed through 
the campus, smashing windows in 
Hamilton Hall and Butler Library. 

The following Thursday, about 
100 D4M supporters marched into 
Hamilton Hall in an unsuccessful at¬ 
tempt to block stairways and prevent 
classes from meeting. Significantly, the 
only black faces in the lobby belonged 
to College and University officials. At 
one point, the group demanded to 
speak to Professor of Economics Har¬ 
old Barger, who had sat on the grand 
jury which indicted the Panther 21. 
Prof. Barger mounted a bench and 
told the demonstrators that the im¬ 
position of $100,000 in bail was in¬ 
deed dishonest. "No bail at all should 
have been given to those characters," 
he asserted. When he stepped down, 
a demonstrator seized the micro¬ 
phone and called Dr. Barger a "teach- 


15 





ing pig," while another shouted that 
he would never teach another class at 
Columbia. Later that day, Prof. Barger 
dismissed his students after several 
demonstrators entered his classroom. 
One of the demonstrators, a College 
senior, was subsequently placed upon 
disciplinary probation by a tribunal. 

Ultimately, requests for bail or 
assistance in raising bail were turned 
down both by the Senate and the 
Board of Trustees, although the Senate 
did issue a resolution condemning 
government repression, “including ... 
the denial of bail or setting of exces¬ 
sive bail, as in the instance of the 
Panther 13." Later that month, the 
University obtained, first, a temporary 
restraining order and later, a prelimi¬ 
nary injunction, prohibiting the “use 
or threat of violence" on campus. 
Eventually, six College and Barnard 
students, five of them members of 
D4M, were convicted and fined for 
violating the injunction in connection 
with “trashing" incidents early in 
April. In another related development, 
34 senior professors announced, on 
April 10, the formation of a “Coun¬ 
cil of Tenured Faculty," to help 


“strengthen the University" against 
“vandalism, violence, or attempted ex¬ 
tortion" on the part of “a miniscule 
group of extremists, students and non¬ 
students." 

Toward the end of April, S.D.S. 
undertook one of its more successful 
campaigns of the year: a week-long 
boycott of University dining rooms to 
compel the rehiring of a Johnson Hall 
vegetable cook who had resigned after 
a dispute with the head manager, but 
later changed his mind and sought 
reinstatement. According to Spectator, 
the boycott, enforced by pickets from 
S.D.S., the Third World Coalition, and 
employees, virtually emptied the din¬ 
ing areas. Faced in addition with a 
threatened slowdown by cafeteria 
workers, the University agreed to re¬ 
hire the cook. While the boycott was 
in progress, Golash and Alan Egelman 
'71 were brought to the Security Room 
of Low Library by security guards and 
detained there for 45 minutes, after 
allegedly violating a rule which pro¬ 
hibited the sale of newspapers on 
campus. Spectator reported that 
guards clubbed Golash repeatedly in 
the stomach as they dragged him to¬ 


ward the administration building. 
According to a University spokesman, 
however, Golash initiated the violence 
by jumping a policeman. Golash 
denies the charge. When he was re¬ 
leased, he had a deep cut under his 
right eye. Kaslow, who joined a small 
crowd which congregated at an 
entrance to Low while the two S.D.S. 
members were inside, was also 
clubbed by campus police, Spectator 
reported, and thrown down the door¬ 
way steps by the guards. 

A few days later, President Rich¬ 
ard Nixon announced the invasion of 
Cambodia, the strike descended upon 
the campus, and all other political 
activity was pushed, for the time be¬ 
ing, into the background. 

A survey of the past year estab¬ 
lishes that the radicals have declined 
considerably, both in strength and in 
numbers, since the fateful spring of 
1968. At the same time, radical groups 
continue to command the allegiance 
of a small but dedicated minority, and 
are even able to broaden their base 
on particular issues. The campus and 
the nation are a long way from a re¬ 
turn to normalcy. 



BANNER OCCASION: Mike Colash harangues audience at first hearing for fiveSDSers. 

$ mISh” imperial is mi 

KLL^ WITH G.E. WORK 



16 















MAKING WAVES: Almost alone among major extracurricular 
activities, radio station WKCR is thriving. 


NIX ON 
EXTRACURRIX 

Traditional extracurricular activ¬ 
ities at Columbia seem to be reeling 
under the same blows which decked 
radical politics during most of the past 
academic year. 

Student leaders and administra¬ 
tors attribute their decline to several 
factors. 

Principal among these is a falling 
away of interest in structured pro¬ 
grams of any kind, coupled with a 
rising suspiciousness of anything 
blessed by the University "establish¬ 
ment." "Everybody's out doing his 
own thing," explained one senior. "If 
other people happen to be doing the 
same thing, that's all well and good. 
But most of the kids see little purpose 
in joining organized groups." 

Similarly, few students seem to as¬ 
pire to positions of leadership. 
"There's no status in it anymore," 
scoffs former Community Service 
Council chairman Jeff Rudman '70. 
"Kids still want to run their own pro¬ 
grams, but it's because they're tied 
to the program, not because they like 
upper-level administration. Nobody 
wants to be a bureaucrat." 


The old status symbols — pinky 
rings, for example—have lost much of 
their glamor. The prospect of election 
to one of the two senior societies, 
once the crowning accomplishment 
of a successful extracurricular career, 
no longer fires most students. "Are 
those things still around?" asked Van 
Am president Stanley Crock '72. And 
David Aborn '70, the former head of 
Nacoms, acknowledges that under¬ 
graduates generally aren't aware of 
either group, including many who are 
subsequently tapped for membership. 

Some point to a decline in formal¬ 
ity, or in traditional school spirit, as 
reasons for widespread apathy. "Joe 
College died in 1967," sums up David 
Bogorad '70, the editor of the 1970 
Columbian. In the new, informal at¬ 
mosphere, such old-line organizations 
as the service societies are dismissed 
as "stodgy" or "mickey mouse." 

Drugs come in for their share of 
the blame, both as cause and as symp¬ 
tom. "Narcotics certainly diminish in¬ 
terest in activities of any kind," points 
out Director of Kings Crown Activities 
Frank Safran '58. Others, however, 
view the drug culture more as a mani¬ 
festation of the prevailing malaise. 
Comments Rudman: "The kids who 


would have entered class politics ten 
years ago, or joined SDS two years ago, 
are simply retreating to their rooms 
and turning on with a small group of 
friends." 

Many upperclassmen see in the 
attitudes of freshmen and sophomores 
the emergence of a new generation 
gap. According to one senior, fresh¬ 
men today are "more cynical" than 
the entering classes of two and three 
years ago. "They're turned off on 
structured activities," he explains, "be¬ 
cause they think there's no hope in 
working with the system, but they're 
also disenchanted with radical politics, 
because they've been into radical 
politics in high school, and no longer 
see much hope in revolution either." 
Another, ominous difference, he 
warns, is that entering freshmen are 
already sophisticated in drug use by 
the time they come to Columbia. 

Some view the spring 1968 up¬ 
rising as a watershed. "In those days 
we still thought we could change the 
world with a carnival in May," re¬ 
calls Joel Frader '70. As a result of 
what he regards as the Univer¬ 
sity's failure to institute meaningful 
changes, Frader says, not only fresh¬ 
men but many upperclassmen have 


17 








become increasingly alienated and 
disengaged, as well as passive and 
introverted. 

Several activities have tried to 
streamline their image in keeping with 
the mood of the times. The chairmen 
of Van Am and Blue Key report that 
they have discarded the traditional 
uniform jackets, and no longer em¬ 
phasize dress as a factor in the selec¬ 
tion of candidates. Both groups are 
sponsoring less formal activities than 
in the past: Van Am expects next year 
to revise drastically the format of the 
Deans Drag, which attracted just 250 
guests last fall, and was rescued from 
financial disaster only because one of 
the scheduled bands failed to show. 
This spring, Blue Key opened its ranks 
to freshmen from Barnard, the School 
of Engineering, and the School of 
General Studies, while Van Am 
solicited applications from Barnard 
girls and sophomores. Nevertheless, 
both organizations — which formerly 
enjoyed the pick of entering classes— 
had to extend their recruiting periods 
an extra week. And when the tallies 
were in, a dismal total of 52 students— 
some from outside the College—had 
sought membership. Blue Key filled 
its 15 positions from a field of 34 ap¬ 
plicants, and Van Am went below 15 
for the first time in memory. Its 13 
probates include five Barnard women 
and four sophomores, two from each 
school. 

Nacoms and Sachems have dis¬ 
carded much of the secrecy of former 
times, as well as some of their tradi¬ 
tional rivalry. The two groups have 
conducted at least one joint meeting 
during each of the past two years, and 
have eliminated the competition for 
"double-taps" by working out their 
selections in advance. At the double 
meeting, recalls outgoing Sachems 
chairman Loren Lavine '70, the 
seniors were challenged by the new 
members, who demanded to know 
what the societies did, and why they 
should bother to belong. Sachems 
raised money last year by sponsoring 
a film series under the cryptic symbol 
"SSS"—not, insists Lavine, for the sake 
of secrecy, but "because even if we'd 
spelled out our name, people 
wouldn't have known who we were." 

Many of the King's Crown Activi¬ 
ties report a falling off of interest and 
participation. Columbian , reports 


Bogorad, depended largely on con¬ 
tributions from outsiders. "For the 
past two years, we've had maybe two 
to five people who worked regularly," 
he says. "You can tell how many 
people we had prior to 1968 just by 
looking at our staff photos." Next 
year, he predicts, the Yearbook may 
have to use more photographs and 
less text. According to Bogo.rad, "this 
isn't necessarily bad per se. What 
makes it bad is that the small size of 
our staff leaves us with no choice." 
Nevertheless Columbian turned out, 
on schedule, one of its most profes¬ 
sional and imaginative pieces, includ¬ 
ing a number of spectacular color 
snapshots of various aspects of campus 
life. 

The Band and the Glee Club are 
also hurting. Glee Club director 
Bruce Trinkley estimates that com¬ 
bined membership in the varsity and 
junior varsity groups is down from 75 
to 80 five years ago to 45 today. "Until 
recently we could schedule anything," 
Trinkley declares, "and count on 
enough of a turnout to produce a 
good sound. Now we still get about 
80 per cent of our membership at 
every concert, but 80 per cent is 
quantitatively much fewer than in the 
past." The Band is in somewhat better 
shape, largely because the addition of 
Barnard girls has kept the member¬ 
ship rolls at a fairly consistent level. 
Nevertheless, former Drum Major 
Albert Bergeret '70 concedes that at¬ 


tendance at away games has dropped 
considerably, and the concert band— 
as distinguished from the marching 
band—is smaller than it used to be. 
However, Bergeret attributes the prob¬ 
lems of the concert band to personal¬ 
ity clashes between the conductor and 
some of the players, rather than to 
general student malaise. "Not every¬ 
one here is blowing his mind on 
drugs," he emphasizes. Trinkley cites 
changes in interests and attitudes as 
only one factor in his group's present 
difficulties. Another, he adds, was a 
poor recruiting drive. Neither spokes¬ 
man discerns any significant dif¬ 
ferences in participation among the 
various classes. The Band, notes 
Bergeret, is dominated by sopho¬ 
mores. 

Even the Review, once a haven for 
non-conformists, is feeling the same 
pinch as other, "establishmentarian" 
activities. "We're not bureaucratic, 
but our staff page and table of con¬ 
tents make us seem to be," sighs edi¬ 
tor Paul Spike '70, who complains 
that his magazine has no freshmen at 
all. "The prevalent ennui and feeling 
of frustration have affected the tradi¬ 
tional forms of self-expression as 
well as the more structured activities," 
explains Spike. "In the 'sixties, people 
still believed that it was possible to 
create a new literature and art. But 
students are so frustrated today that 
the most vibrant form of self-expres¬ 
sion is rock, or, for the non-musical, 



18 








films." (He's right about films. The 
new Filmmakers Club is thriving in 
spite of a dearth of equipment and the 
absence of University support. Chair¬ 
man Les Alexander '71 reports that in¬ 
terest is particularly high among fresh¬ 
men. Alexander points with pride to 
the completely unstructured nature of 
the new organization: "I'm chairman 
only because no-one else wants to do 
it, and I don't want us to fold.") 

Spectator has been especially hard 
hit. The winds of change have blown 
through the editorial office: the jack¬ 
ets and ties traditionally required of 
working reporters have given way to 
more casual dress, and the Managing 
Board is now elected by the entire 
staff, instead of by the outgoing edi¬ 
tors. But the newspaper is in trouble. 
Its annual subsidy of $20,000 has been 
terminated, allegedly because of its 
failure to publish official notices, as 
its contract with the University re¬ 
quires. Outgoing editor-in-chief Paul 
Starr '70 estimates that Spectator has 
sufficient reserves to absorb a small 
deficit for another six or seven years, 
until new sources of revenue are 
found, but admits that a large deficit 
would be a serious blow. His suc¬ 
cessor, Martin Flumenbaum '71, is 
less optimistic: he believes the paper 
can survive only another three years 
with its present resources. Moreover, 
the size of the staff has declined. There 
were only six juniors this year to apply 
for Managing Board. As a result, Spec¬ 

Glee Clubbers rehearse for a concert. 

Their membership is down also. 


tator was forced for the first time to 
name sophomores to Managing Board 
positions. Another problem, says Flu¬ 
menbaum, was. that "we found that 
when we promoted lower classmen, 
we had to promote them all." The 
Board now consists of fourteen mem¬ 
bers, each with an editorial vote. In an 
effort to revive flagging interest, Spec¬ 
tator has begun paying its editors. But 
the top salary—$650 for the editor-in- 
chief—is still woefully small by Ivy 
League standards. The business side is 
in even sorrier shape. Lawrence Levin 
'70, the former Business Manager, was 
the only member of the business de¬ 
partment from the College during his 
sophomore, junior and senior years. 
Last year, the newspaper ran two 
"Save Spectator" ads, appealing ur¬ 
gently for business candidates. The 
new Business Managing Board, ac¬ 
cording to Levin, includes two fresh¬ 
men. Levin blames not only what he 
calls "the general disenchantment 
with anything traditional or hierarchi¬ 
cal," but also the fact that there is no 
glamor in working for the business 
staff. 

Spectator now has additional wor¬ 
ries. The Internal Revenue Service 
recently acknowledged that it is in¬ 
vestigating the tax-exempt status of 
the newspaper. The reason, according 
to I.R.S. officials, is that the campus 
daily has endorsed political candidates 
and taken positions on pending legis¬ 
lation. 


A few organizations are bucking 
the trend. The Board of Managers— 
which, like Spectator , has become 
"democratized," and now selects its 
program heads by vote of the entire 
staff—reports that it is thriving, al¬ 
though outsiders often take a less 
glowing view of its activities. So, by 
general consensus, is the Community 
Service Council, which broke off from 
the parent Citizenship Council after a 
lengthy and acrimonious dispute be¬ 
tween "radicals" and "liberals" which 
began during the 1968 strike. The 
radicals stuck with Cit Council, which 
has since gone into a tailspin, and 
now supports only a handful of 
projects. The Community Service 
Council, on the other hand, claims 
several hundred members—the exact 
figure is uncertain—and is actively in¬ 
volved in tutoring and various com¬ 
munity action programs in the neigh¬ 
borhood. It also sponsors educational 
projects at Harlem Hospital and Riker's 
Island Prison. One possible reason 
why C.S.C. and B.O.M. are so relatively 
successful is that both allow their 
members considerable latitude in 
formulating and developing individual 
programs. 

Another group which has done re¬ 
markably well in recent years is radio 
station WKCR. KCR received a boost 
with its coverage of the 1968 strike, 
which was widely hailed by other 
communications media, and it has 
been gathering momentum ever 
since. However, former president Tom 
Keenan '70 concedes that there has 
been a diminution, not in the size of 
the organization, but in what he calls 
the "fanaticism and loyalty" of the 
"hard-core members." As a result, he 
notes, it is sometimes difficult to find 
staffing for dull or esoteric programs. 
KCR, like C.S.C. and B.O.M., allows its 
members wide freedom to create their 
own shows. Keenan also reports that 
KCR is one of the few activities in 
which old-fashioned jockeying for 
high position still persists. 

If present trends continue, the 
coming decade will witness a further 
decline in structured activity, and the 
emergence of a greater number of in¬ 
formal groups such as Filmmakers. 
Perhaps, with the passage of time, 
these will ultimately become as 
bureaucratized, hierarchical, and tradi¬ 
tion-ridden as their predecessors. 



19 






TOMORROW 

AND 

TOMORROW 

AND... 

Suddenly we're being told that 
mankind's tomorrows are numbered. 
Ecologists, who study the interaction 
of living beings with their environ¬ 
ments, are warning that unless we 
stop polluting, plundering, and over- 
populating the earth, the human 
species will soon end up as dead 
as the dinosaur. 

At Columbia, ecology-conscious¬ 
ness has bloomed this year like blue- 
green algae in a eutrophic lake. You 
don't know what "eutrophic" means? 
You're not alone. But the number of 
Columbians who do know is grow¬ 
ing constantly, as the University com¬ 
munity awakes to the environmental 
crisis. 

The crisis poses a challenge to 
Columbia, which does not have a 
strong, unified program in environ¬ 
mental studies. There are more than 
30 courses currently offered on topics 
like human ecology, noise and air 
pollution, and conservation theory, 
but they are sprinkled throughout the 
University from the medical school 
to the School of Architecture. This 
fragmentation is partly a reflection 
of the fact that ecology is inter¬ 
disciplinary. Complex environmental 
problems call for ecology-wise econ¬ 
omists, law and policy makers, and 
urban planners, as well as scientists 
with competence in all the environ¬ 
mental sciences, which include as¬ 
pects of geology, biology, chemistry, 
and physics. Effective programs in 
ecology must pull all the fragments 
together in order to be truly inter¬ 
disciplinary. 

Recent developments are en¬ 
couraging. The Engineering School, 
for one, has announced that next year 
it will offer interdisciplinary masters 
and doctoral programs in environ¬ 
mental science and engineering, in 
cooperation with the School of. Archi¬ 
tecture, the Departments of Biological 
Sciences and Geology, and others. 

Some innovations have already 
been made. Roughly a third of the 


ecology-related courses offered this 
year are new. The Law School, for 
instance, is giving two courses on 
law and environment for the first 
time. 

The College has been mustering 
its resources, too. Last year, there 
was only one College course in 
ecology, appropriately entitled "En¬ 
vironmental Science." Two more have 
been added. A one-year geology of¬ 
fering for non-science majors, "Man's 
Physical Environment and Mineral Re¬ 
sources," deals with such problems 
as the use of our limited mineral re¬ 
serves, the disposal of industrial 
wastes, and water pollution. The 
other, "Urban Ecology," is being given 
this spring, primarily for scientists. 
It's an interdisciplinary study and it's 
been packing in crowds like the 
crosstown shuttle. As many as 250 
students from the College, Barnard, 
and the graduate school flock to the 
semi-weekly lectures. 

"Urban Ecology" was made pos¬ 
sible by a grant from the Council for 
Biology in Human Affairs of the Salk 
Institute. The brainstorm of Wallace 
Broecker, professor of geology, and 
Cyrus Levinthal, chairman of the bi¬ 
ology department, it investigates the 
physical and biological problems of 
city living. Lectures are given by guest 
experts on topics ranging from hous¬ 
ing and transportation to contracep¬ 
tive techniques and the ecology of 
the urban rat. 

In conjunction with the course, 
about 50 students and teachers have 
formed intensive study groups. There 
are four such groups, each exploring 
a separate topic: transportation; needs 
and sources of electrical and thermal 
power; psychological effects of urban 
stress; and how growing concentra¬ 
tions of people, and the agricultural 
technology developed to feed them, 
combine to pollute our water sup¬ 
plies. "Intensive study" means what 
it says: participants are expected to 
devote at least ten hours a week to 
lectures, library work, interviews, and 
writing up their findings. 

The geography department has 
three new undergraduate courses 
waiting in the wings, and will offer 
undergraduates a concentrate in en¬ 
vironmental management and con¬ 
servation next year. Increased co¬ 
operation with Barnard, which is 


planning a program in environmental 
science and conservation, will en¬ 
large College students' options even 
more. Meanwhile, the old geog¬ 
raphy-geology stand-by, "Environ¬ 
mental Science," has been given a 
face-lift, and is taught by two men 
instead of one. The revamped course 
now devotes one semester to ex¬ 
plaining how the atmosphere and 
earth systems work, and the second 
to a case-study examination of nat¬ 
ural, man-modified, and man-made 
environments. During the first se¬ 
mester, for example, students learn 
about such atmospheric processes as 
inversion. This prepares them to un¬ 
derstand air pollution in New York 
City. 

Next year the course will be 
given by a three-man team including 
a climatologist, a hydrologist and 
urban systems expert, and an agricul¬ 
tural ecologist. Explains John Oliver 
(the climatologist), "There's so much 
new material coming out on the sub¬ 
ject that it's difficult for one person, 
or even two, to keep up with it." 

COLLEGE- 

ECOLOGY 

Much of the ecological educa¬ 
tion on campus is going on outside 
the lecture halls. Environmental evan¬ 
gelists among the student body and 
the faculty are joining to spread the 
Bad News beyond the classroom, ex¬ 
posing the ecological sins of indi¬ 
viduals and institutions. 

Approaches vary. WKCR, Colum¬ 
bia's student-run radio station, has 
given over its semi-weekly "Class¬ 
room" broadcast to lectures and 
roundtable discussions on the urban 
environment. Student organizations 
sponsor films, talks, and teach-ins on 
ecological topics. Participants in an 
extra-curricular seminar have met 
several times to discuss environmental 
problems under the guidance of 
Nobel physicist and University Vice 
President Polykarp Kusch. 

Not all the activity has been so 
formally educational. More direct ac¬ 
tion is favored by two new campus 
organizations which have emerged as 
champions of the land, sea, and air. 

Tactics of a fledgling group called 


20 



Sid sattler 


Ecology Action include "dramatizing 
the issues/' according to Deborah 
Solomon, a graduate student in biol¬ 
ogy who is an active member. Al¬ 
though the group sponsors its share of 
discussions and talks, it also employs 
showier gestures, such as protesting a 
ten-cent fare hike by staging skits right 
inside the subway cars. (Cheap, effi¬ 
cient mass transportation would make 
automobiles unnecessary, the anti- 
pollutionists point out.) The group's 
attention-grabbing repertoire also in¬ 
cludes demonstrating (for the repeal 
of abortion laws, against the New York 
Auto Show) and heckling "environ¬ 
mental villains" (such as Atomic En¬ 
ergy Commission officials at a recent 
New York City Council hearing on 
nuclear reactors). 

Ecology Action was launched this 
fall by graduate students in the sci¬ 
ences, who borrowed their name from 
a similar but autonomous group in 
Berkeley. The new group first con¬ 
centrated on drawing attention to the 
nuclear reactor which Columbia 
hopes to activate, and raising ques¬ 
tions about its safety. Members, who 
number perhaps 50, have since de¬ 
centralized. Divided into study-action 
groups, people pursue their separate 
interests, pushing for improved mass 
transportation and the elimination of 
the automobile in the city or co¬ 
operating with the United Farm 
Workers to publicize the dangers of 
pesticides, which kill 1,000 people 
each year. 

Most members of Ecology Action 
are left-liberal or radical in their views, 
and attribute our environmental prob¬ 


lems to economic emphasis on an 
ever-growing GNP. They accuse the 
government of being a chief polluter 
and of protecting the interests of the 
big corporations which foster pollu¬ 
tion. "Why should the government 
use our tax money to do research on 
anti-pollution devices which they will 
give, like a subsidy, to industry," de¬ 
mands Miss Solomon. 

Ecology Action is leaderless by 
choice. Power is exercised by those 
who do the most work and have the 
most scientific knowledge. 

Knowledge of law is the key to 
effectiveness in another group, the 
Environmental Law Council. Organ¬ 
ized this fall by law students, the 
Council has about 150 dues-paying 
members, mostly students and faculty 
of the Law School. The group sponsors 
bi-weekly discussions, led by experts, 
on legal aspects of environmental 
problems. A cbnservationist lawyer, 
for instance, spoke on the legal action 
taken against oil companies as a result 
of the Santa Barbara oil spills. 

Besides educating themselves, 
members of the group do research on 
environmental protection and give 
legal advice to citizens' groups. One 
recent request for help came from a 
tenants' organization which wants to 
restrain a company from building a 
huge new skyscraper, because asbes¬ 
tos is being sprayed into the air as a 
result of construction. 

In March, the Council sponsored 
a meeting of students from 65 eastern 
law schools, to exchange ideas and ex¬ 
plore possibilities for joint legal ac¬ 
tion on environmental matters. 


THE GOOD GUYS 

Some people find the villains in 
literature far more interesting than the 
heroes. The good guys are so dull, 
whereas there are so many delicious 
variations on being bad. The same, 
fortunately, does not hold true of 
teachers. 

Four Columbia professors have 
been recognized this year for their 
contributions to undergraduate edu¬ 
cation. At a time when many tenured 
faculty members prefer research and 
graduate instruction to teaching in the 
College, these four are bucking the 
trend. Aside from that, perhaps the 
only thing they all have in common is 
that they are not dull. 

The Mark Van Doren Award is 
presented annually by the students of 
the College to an outstanding faculty 
member who exhibits "humanity, de¬ 
votion to truth, and inspiring leader¬ 
ship." This year it was given to Charles 
Frankel, professor of philosophy and 
public affairs. 

Prof. Frankel, who served as an 
Assistant Secretary of State from 1965 
to 1967, is sympathetic to students' 
desires that education deal more with 
social and moral issues. "I think of my¬ 
self as a relevant philosopher," he 
says, explaining that he believes his 
ongoing involvement in the "real 
world" equips him to be a better 
teacher. He is a past master of the 
Socratic method of teaching, drawing 
from his students ideas about what 
they've been reading. But unlike 
Plato's Socrates, who asked loaded 


PROF. CYRUS LEVINTHAL: 

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL: Pollution is "in." research instead of cookbooks. 



21 


COLUMBIAN 








PROF. KENNETH KOCH: The light bulbs flash. PROF. CHARLES FRANKEL: 

a re/evant philosopher. 


questions and always seemed to have 
plenty of yes-men around, Prof. Fran- 
kel leads his classes in spirited ex¬ 
changes instead of games of follow- 
the-leader. It's the difference between 
asking "Don't you think that" and "Do 
you think that." 

"I try to irritate my students into 
discovering things for themselves," 
says Frankel, a 1937 graduate of the 
College who has taught at Columbia 
for 31 years. He finds he enjoys teach¬ 
ing undergraduates more than grad¬ 
uate students. "It's exciting to see 
them discover some of these problems 
for the first time. It's also very much a 
process in which I learn from my stu¬ 
dents." 

Art history professor Howard McP. 
Davis was the choice for the Van 
Doren award two years ago. This year, 
he added the Great Teacher award of 
the Society of Older Grads to his col¬ 
lection of honors. A specialist in Ren¬ 
aissance painting, he has been teach¬ 
ing at Columbia since 1944. By all the 
laws of publish or perish, he should 
be long gone. ("I love to teach, but I 
don't like writing at all," he grimaces.) 
Nevertheless, he is chairman of his de¬ 
partment. He teaches three courses, 
two of them — by preference — at the 
undergraduate level. 

He is long and lank, with a brushy 
mustache and a brambly Van Dyke 


beard, and he rather looks like an 
artist himself. Some of his students 
mistakenly assume that he is one. 
"They tell me they like my teaching 
because I approach paintings from an 
artist's point of view," he reports. 

The paintings take center stage in 
a Davis course, for which as many as 
200 students enroll. He uses slides 
generously; some of them he has 
taken himself. During most of his lec¬ 
tures, Davis is a gentle, disembodied 
voice in a darkened room. In painterly 
fashion, he sketches his main points in 
broad strokes, then proceeds to add 
rich detail. What he teaches, finally, is 
not art history in any narrow sense, 
but how to look at a work of art, as a 
composition and as the expression of 
both an individual and a culture. 
Asked the secret of his success as a 
teacher, Davis hesitates, then ven¬ 
tures, "I feel very strongly about the 
things I teach and want to sell them to 
my students." 

Cyrus Levinthal, chairman of the 
Department of Biological Sciences, 
has been named the first holder of 
Columbia's William R. Kenan chair, 
which was endowed to support a 
teacher who would "make a notable 
contribution to the University's under¬ 
graduate community." 

With his comfortable look and 
manner, Dr. Levinthal resembles a 


smalltown pharmacist rather than a 
distinguished scientist. A noted re¬ 
searcher in molecular biology, he 
came to Columbia from M.l.T. in 1967. 
Since taking over the department in 
1968, he has wrought wonders, de¬ 
spite a chronic lack of space and 
modern facilities. He feels that his 
most significant accomplishments so 
far have been on the undergraduate 
level. 

"Every teacher who joins this de¬ 
partment understands that he'll de¬ 
vote about half his teaching time to 
undergraduates," he states. He has 
changed the emphasis of the biology 
department from classical biology 
(zoology, evolution) to modern ex¬ 
perimental molecular biology and bio¬ 
chemistry. He has added several new 
courses, one a lab in molecular biol¬ 
ogy in which students carry on original 
research instead of merely duplicating 
time-honored "cookbook" experi¬ 
ments. He has also instituted three 
new majors: analytical biology, bio¬ 
chemistry, and biophysics. 

Perhaps the best indication of his 
success is the fact that the number of 
students majoring in biology has in¬ 
creased from 16 in the Class of '68 to 
44 in the Class of '71. As for his own 
teaching, the course evaluation guide, 
written by and for students, reports 
that "his lectures are exciting, interest- 


22 








ing; informative, and witty, his prob¬ 
lem sets challenging, his concern for 
students sincere." 

Levinthal, Davis, and Frankel en¬ 
tered the academic life purposefully. 
Levinthal is typical when he com¬ 
ments, "It never occurred to me to do 
anything else." English professor Ken¬ 
neth Koch, who teaches exclusively in 
the College, sort of fell into it. "I was a 
poet, but I had to find some means of 
livelihood," he explains. A case study 
in serendipity, Koch was picked last 
fall as a recipient of a $10,000 Dan- 
forth Foundation award for gifted 
teaching. 

Koch, the author of several books 
of poetry and plays, teaches a writing 
course that is practically de rigueur 
among students with literary talent. 
FHe teaches even his literature classes 
from a writer's point of view, rather 
than taking an interpretive or his¬ 
torical tack. ("How does Eliot create 
meaning in this passage," he prods a 
class.) Having students write imita¬ 
tions in the style of a poet or writer 
they're studying is one of his favorite 
teaching devices. 

Many students would take a Koch 
course no matter what he taught. His 
amused and amazed enthusiasms are 
contagious. ("The music in this poem 
is just absolutely beautiful. It's en¬ 
chanting, and beautiful, and .. . ter¬ 
rific!") His classes are part lecture, part 
discussion, and part commedia dell' 
arte —he gestures, breaks into rhyme, 
even barks and clucks to illustrate a 
point. He lets his students into his 
mind —you can almost see the light 
bulbs flashing in his head while he's 
extemporizing. According to Paul 
Spike, a student writer, Koch "teaches 
that writing is inspiring and fun; other 
teachers just talk about what a grind it 

is. " 

Koch himself questions whether 
one can decide who is a "good" 
teacher. "Just because a teacher can 
communicate effectively doesn't mean 
that he's teaching the right thing," he 
points out. But he is convinced of the 
value of studying literature. "Without 

it, people would study only math and 
sociology and things like that, and 
they wouldn't know anything. You 
have to be able to relate what you 
learn to what you feel, and literature 
helps you do that." 


WINNERS 

Columbia, which has frequently 
fared poorly in the competition for 
Rhodes Scholarships, hit the jackpot 
this year with two. The winners, both 
seniors, are Jeffrey B. Rudman of 
Brookline, Mass., and Heywood Dot- 
son of Staten Island, N. Y. 

The scholarships, which are 
awarded for "intellectual attainment, 
character, leadership and physical 
vigor," provide an annual stipend of 
$2,844 for two or three years of 
graduate study at Oxford University, 
England. 

Rudman, an art history major, was 
among the founders of the Commun¬ 
ity Service Council, which he chaired 
during the past year. Under Rudman's 
leadership, C.S.C. became one of the 
College's most successful extracurricu¬ 
lar groups, sponsoring ambitious and 
far-ranging volunteer programs in the 
Morningside area and in other parts of 
the city. Chartered in the aftermath of 
a split among the leaders of the Citi¬ 
zenship Council, C.S.C. has com¬ 
pletely eclipsed the parent organiza¬ 
tion, and now claims more than 300 
members. In addition, Rudman is a 
Lawrence Chamberlain scholar. The 
Chamberlain Scholarship, named for 
the former Dean of the College and 
Vice-President of the University, is 
awarded by the Dean in recognition 
of academic excellence and service to 
the school. 

Dotson, who for three years has 
co-starred with Jim McMillan '70 on 
some of the finest basketball teams in 
Columbia's history, has also served as 
co-chairman of the Undergraduate 
Academic Affairs Committee, chair¬ 
man of the Columbia Afro-American 
Studies Program, vice-chairman of the 
Students Afro-American Society, and 
one of the two student members on 
the College Committee on Instruction. 
The former Stuyvesant High School 
basketball stand-out student—teaches 
at the Horace Mann High School in 
the Bronx. 

Both men are frequently heard 
on Columbia's radio station, WKCR: 
Rudman as a disc jockey on his own 
musical comedy show, called "Curtain 
Time," and Dotson as a sports an¬ 
nouncer during the football season. 
Both are also Dean's List scholars. 

Rudman, who will study either 


politics or philosophy in England, is 
not yet certain of what he will do 
when he returns. Dotson, a pre-law 
student, makes no attempt to conceal 
his political ambitions, and admits 
that he "wouldn't mind becoming 
Mayor of New York." A stint in one of 
the nation's two pro basketball leagues 
may intervene, as he has been drafted 
by teams in the N.B.A. and A.B.A. For 
the present, he intends to defer his 
debut with the pros until after he has 
studied in England, although an es¬ 
pecially attractive offer could still 
cause him to change his mind. Mean¬ 
while, he may try to stay in shape by 
playing for a European basketball 
squad. If so, he will follow in the 
footsteps of another Rhodes Scholar 
and former Ivy League great, Bill 
Bradley of Princeton, who played for 
an Italian team before returning to 
star with the New York Knicks. 

Rudman is discouraged by the 
seeming detachment of many lower- 
classmen both from politics and ex¬ 
tracurricular pursuits. "It's the Age of 
Aquarius," he says, describing the in¬ 
troversion of many younger students, 
and their withdrawal from structured 
programs. He expresses particular con¬ 
cern about the drug culture, which, he 
belives, has become for many under¬ 
graduates a substitute for organized 
activity. 

Dotson, the brilliant if tempera¬ 
mental forward who electrified Co¬ 
lumbia sports fans for three years, 
would like to see intercollegiate ath¬ 
letics abandoned in favor of intra¬ 
murals, "even if it means that Heyward 
Dotson would have found it harder to 
get into school." The result, he sug¬ 
gests, would be "to show our commit¬ 
ment to academics rather than to 
extracurrics. Chicago," he points out, 
"is doing quite well. We too could 
trade on our academic excellence." 

If, however, Columbia persists in 
maintaining an intercollegiate pro¬ 
gram, the intense, soft-spoken senior 
finds it "ridiculous" that the athletes 
should not be paid. "How else do you 
measure worth in a competitive so¬ 
ciety?" he inquires. 

The principal trouble with varsity 
sports, he believes, is that "the very 
fact we compete creates a desire to 
keep up with the pack, and it becomes 
the function of the College to do that. 
But there shouldn't be a pack." 


23 






ON THE 
REBOUND 

The College Admissions Office 
appears to have bounced back suc¬ 
cessfully from the aftermath of the 
1968 strike. Applications, down 13V2 
per cent last year, rose by 15 per cent 
in 1970. Only Princeton, which has 
admitted women for the first time, 
showed a sharper increase. 

In another encouraging develop¬ 
ment, the average College Board 
scores of entering freshmen, which 
plummeted 50 points in the wake of 
the disturbances, have risen to ap¬ 
proximately the level of two years ago. 
Official results have not yet been tabu¬ 
lated, but, unofficially, the average 
verbal score hovers in the 670-680 
range, and the average math score is 
about 690. Applicants accepted in 
April, 1968, just before the Spring up¬ 
rising, averaged 695 on both tests, ac¬ 
cording to Associate Director of Ad¬ 
missions Mike Lacopo '57. The present 
figure was attained even though 20 
per cent of the incoming freshmen 
come from minority groups, whose 
Board results tend to be significantly 
lower than those of middle class stu¬ 
dents. The disparity reflects differ¬ 
ences, not in intelligence, but in the 
quality of high school preparation. 
These can be erased in college through 
drive and determination, qualities 
which admissions officers actively seek 
in reviewing the folders of candidates 
from disadvantaged areas. 


THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN: Admissions staff meets. 
L. to R., William Cornog, Director John Wellington, incoming 
Director Michael Lacopo, William Oliver, Paul Mendelsohn. 


Board scores, moreover, are only 
one of several indicia of academic 
merit. High school grade-point aver¬ 
ages and class standings of entering 
freshmen have remained fairly con¬ 
stant over the past two years, and if 
anything have risen slightly —a fact 
which suggests that Columbia has 
continued to attract the cream of the 
nation's young students during the 
post-strike period. 

In other vital statistics, Columbia 
fared poorly m comparison with its 
Ivy League rivals. In spite of the 15 per 
cent upsurge, the College received 
barely 3800 applications, the lowest 
number in the League. Dartmouth, 
which takes in only a slightly larger 
freshman class, was second from the 
bottom with 4600. More disturbingly, 
Columbia found it necessary to accept 
more students per place available than 
all but one of its sister institutions: 
1350 for 725 openings. Only Cornell, 
with 2190 acceptances for 875 vacan¬ 
cies, anticipated a higher rate of re¬ 
fusal. 

Columbia usually trails other Ivy 
League schools in both these depart¬ 
ments, and this year's showing, there¬ 
fore, cannot be attributed to the strike. 
Officials suggest several reasons why 
the College seems to be less attractive 
to many high school seniors than, say, 
Harvard or Yale. "We don't project 
the same self-consciously Ivy image," 
suggested one administrator, adding, 
"Thank God." The prospect of living 
in a huge metropolitan area frightens 
away many applicants from smaller 


communities—and, paradoxically, also 
discourages New York youngsters who 
want a change of scene. Columbia, in 
addition, has the well-deserved repu¬ 
tation of being even tougher academi¬ 
cally than its prestigious sister institu¬ 
tions. And there is the perennial prob¬ 
lem of persuading candidates that the 
College is really a fairly intimate place 
with only 2600 students (smallest of 
the Ivies), and not a factory of 17,000. 

Significant changes have taken 
place in the structure of the Admis¬ 
sions program, largely in response to 
suggestions by students, including 
minority groups. For the past two 
years, four College seniors, selected by 
the Admissions Office from a list 
drawn up by the Undergraduate Sec¬ 
ondary Schools Committee, have been 
invited to sit with the Admissions 
Committee and vote as if they were 
members. The Admissions Committee, 
consisting of six instructors and four 
administrators, has power to pass 
upon all applications, although in 
practice the less controversial ones are 
dealt with by the Admissions staff. In 
addition, several undergraduates are 
included among the part-time em¬ 
ployees who interview high school 
seniors. 

The minority group suggestion, 
which the Admissions Office adopted 
in modified form, was submitted 
somewhat less gently than the plan to 
seat undergraduates at Committee 
meetings. In April, 1969, a group of 
blacks staged a sit-in in the Admis¬ 
sions Office to demand, in effect, a 


24 













separate admissions structure. (Nine 
alleged participants in that demonstra¬ 
tion were tried by a College tribunal 
11 months later. After a tumultuous 
hearing, three were acquitted and six 
convicted. The six received suspended 
sentences.) Although no concessions 
were promised at the time the sit-in 
ended, the Admissions Office shortly 
afterward instituted a procedure 
whereby the folders of all rejected 
minority applicants are reviewed by 
readers from the same minority group. 
Disagreements between the readers 
and the Admissions Committee are re¬ 
solved at a joint meeting of the Com¬ 
mittee and a "Review Board" com¬ 
posed of the minority group readers, 
who include three black faculty mem¬ 
bers, one Asian professor, and a Puerto 
Rican from the community. To date, 
reports Admissions Director John 
Wellington '57, the two bodies have 
been able to reach agreement on all 
candidates. 

There will be some changes next 
year in the composition of the staff, 
all of whose present members, by the 
way, possess M.A.s in English. Well¬ 
ington will leave to become Director 
of Alumni Relations, and will be suc¬ 
ceeded on July 1 by Lacopo. Admis¬ 
sions officer Paul Mendelsohn will 
depart for the Fieldston School in 
Riverdale, N. Y., where he will serve 
as College Counselor. 

The new director faces delicate 
problems, brought on by the size of 
the College and its commitment to 
various programs. Columbia has 
pledged itself to the education of 
large numbers of disadvantaged stu¬ 
dents. At the same time, it remains 
committed to the maintenance of a 
football team. Some question whether 
a small school can do both and still 
continue to function as a first-rate in¬ 
stitution academically. Minority stu¬ 
dents, because of inadequate earlier 
schooling, often lack the statistical 
qualifications expected of other can¬ 
didates, and some football players also 
score below the College average. 
Football, moreover, requires a larger 
number of candidates than other 
sports. On the other hand, faculty 
members whose devotion to high in¬ 
tellectual standards is unquestioned 
defend existing policies cn the ground 
that they lend needed diversity to the 
school. 


WHEN WORLDS 
COLLIDE 

"Morningside Heights, the Co¬ 
lumbia neighborhood, is a resi¬ 
dential, educational, and cultural 
community in upper Manhattan, 
near the Hudson River." 

"Columbia University lies on 
the western edge of Harlem, one 
of the largest Black communities 
in the country." 

Both paragraphs come from 
booklets designed for prospective ap¬ 
plicants to the College. Both booklets 
are prepared and distributed under 
the auspices of the College Admis¬ 
sions Office. There the similarity ends. 

The first paragraph is part of a 
pamphlet entitled "About Columbia 
College," and helps set to rest the ap¬ 


MINORITY RECRUITMENT: 

Some friction, some progress. 

prehensions of white middle class 
youngsters who still constitute the 
majority of Columbia undergraduates. 
The second is taken from Black and 
Latin at Columbia, a tract which is 
written by black and Latin students, 
principally for members of various 
ethnic minorities who think they 
might wish to study at Morningside. 
The juxtaposition underscores the 
peculiar and highly sensitive problems 
which surround the admission and re¬ 
cruitment of non-whites. 

In certain superficial respects, the 
problems are the same as those in¬ 
volved in the selection of some ath¬ 
letes. Applicants from both groups 
may score less impressively than other 
candidates on the statistical indicators 
of merit: grades and Board scores. 
Both may require extensive financial 
assistance. 

But there are important differ- 


25 


BONNIE FREER 













ences. Columbia's commitment to ath¬ 
letics is of ancient origins. The athletic 
program, moreover, can rely on so¬ 
phisticated and well-financed machin¬ 
ery, including a nationwide network of 
active alumni, for the discovery and 
wooing of prospects. Recruitment of 
black and Latin students, on the other 
hand, began only recently, and until 
this year was carried out on a shoe¬ 
string budget. In 1968-69, for ex¬ 
ample, the Students Afro-American 
Society (S.A.S.) received about $3,000, 
partly from the Dean, partly from the 
Admissions Office, to scout around 
pretty much as it wished. Not only was 
the campaign poorly funded, but of¬ 
ficial controls proved to be inade¬ 
quate. In particular, reports Special As¬ 
sistant to the Dean Melvin V. Bur- 
well, there was no structure for ac¬ 
countability in the use of the money. 
In April, 1969, Burwell, a black with 
extensive counselling experience in 
the New Jersey high schools, was hired 
to help provide one. 

From the outset, Burwell has had 
his problems. There is, he concedes, a 
considerable "confidence gap" be¬ 
tween himself and the non-white stu¬ 
dents with whom he was assigned to 
work. "You're viewed as part of the 
establishment no matter what you 
do," he explains. "You have to walk a 
very tight line to be effective." A 
member of S.A.S. states the case even 
more bluntly. "We want to deal di¬ 
rectly with Hovde and Cordier," he 
declared. "We're not going to trust 
anybody whom the enemy brings in 
to mediate." 

Friction developed early. Last 
October, Burwell called a meeting of 
minority students to plan a recruit¬ 
ment campaign. Only about 20 at¬ 
tended, and some of these were 
openly hostile to the new administra¬ 
tor. Burwell announced that he had 
been given $3500, which he planned 
to use in six cities, none of them in the 
south. 

The students were not satisfied. 
Later that fall, the Third World Coali¬ 
tion, consisting of S.A.S., Concerned 
Black Students (a more moderate 
black organization whose representa¬ 
tive later dropped out of the group), 
the Latin-American Student Organiza¬ 
tion ("LASO") and the Asian-Ameri- 
can Political Alliance, by-passed Bur¬ 
well and went directly to Dean of the 


College Carl Hovde to demand more 
funds. Many of the students involved, 
according to Burwell, had not at¬ 
tended the October meeting. Hovde 
promised an additional $3500. 

This, too, however, was deemed 
insufficient. Third World members 
wanted $12,000 to recruit in 21 dif¬ 
ferent cities. They discussed their de¬ 
mands with the Dean on several oc¬ 
casions. At his suggestion, they pre¬ 
sented him with a detailed budget 
proposal, and made an appointment 
to discuss*it with him at 9:30 a.m. on 
December 17th. 

When the Dean arrived to keep the 
appointment, he found to his surprise 
that there were some 70 students out¬ 
side his office who wanted to hold 
the meeting in the Hamilton Hall 
lobby. "We were tired of seeing the 
Dean invite the same guys—(John) 
Wellington, (Philip) Benson, and Bur¬ 
well — to all our meetings," explained 
one Third Worlder. "We decided that 
if he could bring his friends, we'd 
bring ours." After lengthy discussion 
with the students and other adminis¬ 
trators, Dean Hovde agreed to de¬ 
mands for an open session. At the 
meeting, the Dean undertook to try to 
find whatever funds were necessary to 
help the group carry out its recruiting 
program, although he estimated that 
the job could be done for $9,700. 
However, he indicated, he would do 
his best to come up with additional 
cash if the cost ran over. After the 
Christmas break, he announced that 
the money would definitely be forth¬ 
coming. All funds, it was understood, 
would be channeled through Bur- 
well's office. The Dean also warned 
that future budgets would depend 
largely on the success of this year's 
program. Since the recruitment drive 
was late in starting because of the dis¬ 
pute, the application deadline for 
minority students was extended from 
January 1 to March 1. 

Students who fanned out to vari¬ 
ous high schools throughout the coun¬ 
try reported numerous difficulties. 
Many guidance counselors, black as 
well as white, objected to dealing with 
undergraduates. A few admitted that 
they discouraged black seniors from 
taking the College Boards, "because 
we're afraid that they won't do well." 
Recruiters also complained of strained 
relations with the Admissions Office. 


"A lot of area men used to visit only 
the white schools in certain cities, 
never the black schools," argued one. 
"Then they'd have the gall to accuse 
us of wasting money because we 
visited these black schools without 
finding anyone. How could we know 
that we weren't likely to find anyone, 
when the area men couldn't tell us be¬ 
cause they'd never been to these 
schools themselves?" As a result of 
this year's efforts, the student pre¬ 
dicted, recruiters would henceforward 
know what schools were worth visit¬ 
ing. 

The success of this year's cam¬ 
paign is difficult to evaluate. Incom¬ 
ing Admissions Director Michael La- 
copo '57 reported that the recruitment 
drive had little noticeable effect on 
the number of minority group appli¬ 
cants. However, follow-up efforts, un¬ 
dertaken not only by S.A.S. but also by 
black faculty members, produced an 
increase in the number of accepted 
candidates who decided to come. Last 
year, Burwell reports, the College ad¬ 
mitted about 190 non-whites, only 91 
of whom registered. Next fall, accord¬ 
ing to Lacopo, approximately 20 per 
cent of the entering freshmen will be 
blacks, Latins, or Asians. 

Burwell's responsibilities are not 
limited to recruitment. When he came 
here, he recalls, Dean Hovde told him 
"to do whatever had to be done" to 
provide assistance for minority stu¬ 
dents. "Sometimes," he observes, "I 
feel I'm creating a greater perimeter 
than I can handle successfully." He 
supervises a number of supportive 
programs for non-white students al¬ 
ready here, and looks forward to 
establishing even more. One of the 
most important existing programs is a 
summer project to provide remedial 
training at Camp Columbia for incom¬ 
ing freshmen (including whites) with 
poor verbal skills. In addition, the 
thirtyish, tennis-playing administra¬ 
tor sees himself as an advocate for 
minority applicants for admission, as 
well as for black and Latin undergrad¬ 
uates in academic difficulties. "I've 
always felt strongly about helping the 
guy who has nobody else to help 
him," Burwell explains. "Besides," he 
adds, "any black or Latin who's gotten 
through the public high schools in our 
major cities must have something 
merely in order to have survived." 


26 







CU MOURNS 

Although Robert Harron was not 
an alumnus of Columbia, his lion- 
hearted devotion to the University 
gave him the status of an adopted son. 
During almost thirty years of service 
to Columbia, the former assistant to 
Presidents Eisenhower and Kirk and 
Director of University Relations 
earned a reputation for integrity, loy¬ 
alty, and compassion which made the 
University proud to claim him. He was 
also a modest man, and was at work 
on an autobiography entitled Not 
That It Matters , when he died on De¬ 
cember 14,1969. 

Bob Harron's first connection with 
Columbia came in 1933, when he ac¬ 
cepted a part-time position as football 
publicity manager and aide and ghost 
writer for football coach Lou Little. 
His first assignment was to do advance 
publicity for the Columbia team which 
made it to the Rose Bowl, upsetting 
Stanford, 7-0. Before coming to 
Columbia, he had been a sportswriter, 
first for papers in Minneapolis and 
Boston, then for the New York Post. 

Robert Harron 


He has been called the "best [sports] 
reporter-writer of the era." Leonard 
Koppett, of the New York Times, 
credited him with helping to lay the 
foundations for the Ivy League by his 
staunch championship of amateur 
ideals in college athletics. 

Harron became full-time director 
of sports information at Columbia in 
1938. In 1942, he requested a leave of 
absence to serve in the Navy—at the 
age of 45. When he returned in 1944, 
he was appointed director of public 
information by acting president Frank 
D. Fackenthal. His duties were later 
expanded to include service as an as¬ 
sistant to Presidents Eisenhower and 
Kirk. He retired from Columbia in 
1964 and went on to serve in a similar 
capacity at Trinity College, Hartford, 
Conn., until 1968. 

John Hastings, who is Mr. 
Harron's successor at Columbia, has 
paid him the following tribute: 
"Down through the years there have 
been a handful of men who rightfully 
earned the title of 'Mr. Columbia.' 
And ... no one on the Columbia 
campus disputes the view that Robert 
Harron is the latest in this small band 


of dedicated men." Some of his 
friends have decided that a memorial 
should be created "to perpetuate the 
inspiration Bob gave us during his 
lifetime," and have started a Bob 
Harron Fund for this purpose. The 
use to which the fund will be put has 
not yet been decided. Under consid¬ 
eration are a scholarship; a special 
award, perhaps for journalistic or 
athletic achievement; or the naming 
of a lounge or other facility—perhaps 
in the new gym — after Bob. His 
friends may send contributions to 
Columbia University Bob Harron 
Fund, One Liberty St., New York. 

STRAWBERRY 

STATEMENT 

For James Kunen '70, the upsets 
of Spring '68 turned out to be the be¬ 
ginning of a path to glory. Cork¬ 
screw-haired Jim, currently one of the 
hors d'oeuvres of the New York lit¬ 
erary scene, had travelled a long way 
from his Marlboro, Mass, home and 
Phillips Academy in Andover to land 
in jail as one of the cop-taken-over 
casualties of the Spring take-over. 

When Kunen emerged from being 
busted, a friend on the Harvard Crim¬ 
son persuaded him to write a per¬ 
sonal account of the Columbia drama. 
The article, which Kunen wrote in 
diary form, appeared in the Crimson 
while the strike was still in progress, 
and was promptly picked up by New 
York magazine, the new darling of 
Manhattan literati and would-be pol¬ 
iticians. For New York Jim expanded 
his journal into a series of articles 
describing his experiences as a part- 
time revolutionary who, between T.V. 
interviews and hurried letters home, 
dedicated himself to freeing Col¬ 
umbia from its "elitist and defense 
establishment oriented nature." 

Overnight, Kunen was famous. 
Random House quickly prevailed upon 
him to expand his articles into a full- 
length book, The Strawberry State¬ 
ment, which chronicles Kunen's ex¬ 
periences, thoughts, and afterthoughts 
from way "before the shit hit the 
fan" until well into the summer fol¬ 
lowing the Columbia uprising. 

Much of the book is Holden 
Caulfield revisited, and with its pub- 



27 







lication Kunen became a spokesman- 
hero for his generation. Critics trying 
desperately to fathom the psyche of 
campus revolutionaries and their ilk 
roundly applauded Kunen's inside re¬ 
port of Columbia takeovers, and his 
odyssey toward further political and 
self knowledge in the following 
months. 

The Kunen journal is replete with 
accounts of participatory democ¬ 
racy and new-found revolutionary 
fervor, and asides into personal con¬ 
fusion and mixed motives for involve¬ 
ment (partly for the fun, partly for 
the girls, and mostly for the revolu¬ 
tion). His insights, full of irony and 
just plain humor, proved capable of 
impressing even those who were in¬ 
itially turned off by his radical pol¬ 
itical sentiments, and capable also of 
alienating certain fellow student rad¬ 
icals who viewed the Strawberry 
ramblings as self-indulgent and lack¬ 
ing in revolutionary zeal. 

The book is now available in 
paperback for those who missed it 
in hardcover. In addition, a film ver¬ 
sion is being prepared for release 
early this summer. Kunen disclaims 
responsibility for the latter. He was 
on hand at the Stockton, California 
movie set for a few days in Decem¬ 
ber, just long enough to ad lib a few 
lines as a student extra. (His own part 
is played by someone else.) In the 
short time that he was there, he 
found grist for yet another New York 
article, describing how the movie 
police (real off-duty cops) and the city 
police, the University of Pacific stu¬ 
dents playing Columbia students, and 
the network photographers, real and 
acting, kept getting hopelessly mixed 
up. However, he has not been invited 
back to view the footage, probably, 
he suspects, because the script differs 
markedly from the book, and the pro¬ 
ducers fear he might complain. "They 
really don't want me to know what's 
happening out there," reports Kunen, 
"and so I worry." 

But Kunen has little time for 
worry nowadays. He is busy fielding 
various writing offers and reading 
the works of his imitators. When 
Life ran a picture of students pelting 
Senator Thurmond with marshmal¬ 
lows, the headline read, "The Marsh¬ 
mallow Statement." Esquire, writing 
of student discontent, titled its article 


"The Sour Grapes Statement." 

The Statement still spawns com¬ 
ment back at home, and last Decem¬ 
ber's issue of Jester carried a parody, 
"The Boysenberry Bleep," as its main 
feature. Jester pictured Kunen as a 
navel-contemplating adolescent, hung 
up on living down his jock past and 
becoming a with-it revolutionary. 
(Kunen had quit the Columbia crew 
shortly after the uprising began.) Of 
course it is easy to caricature Kunen, 
to call him "self-seeking" or accuse 
him of selling out to the mass media. 
Kunen's response is to be "as amused 
as anyone" over the Jester article and 
to tell his more biting critics that he 
"intends to use the system against it¬ 
self to get radical ideas across. I'm a 
reformist, not a revolutionary, and 
while grinding out mimeographed 
pamphlets accomplishes something, 
it's useful to the left to have people 
with access to the media." 

Kunen has plenty of that. Al¬ 
ready he has made half a dozen tele¬ 
vision appearances, and on at least 
two occasions tried to spread the 
gospel of youth-style reform. He 
holds the honor of having been 
bleeped out on ABC's Dick Cavett 
show while attempting to give the 
address of the Black Panther legal 
aid fund. In the course of pre-taping 
a guest appearance for the David 
Susskind show, Kunen was forced to 
replace a description of Nixon as a 
"racist pig" with a more genteel ref¬ 
erence to "a national politician from 
San Clemente with certain fascist and 
animal-like tendencies." 

Last summer Kunen hitchhiked 
across the country "to get the feel of 
America" and emerged a la Steinbeck 
with a series of articles which ran in 
eight major newspapers across the 
nation, including the Washington 
Post, Newsday, and the Los Angeles 
Times. 

Travels with Jim may be the basis 
of a second movie, for Kunen has just 
submitted to Columbia Pictures an 
outline for a film script centering 
upon the experiences of a young 
man hitching across country. Cur¬ 
rently titled The Inner State High¬ 
way System, the film, says Kunen, 
would actually deal with "the sexual 
exploitation and commercialization 
which keeps people from really re¬ 
lating to one another." 


In developing this theme, Kunen 
was influenced by his girl friend 
Laura's involvement in Women's Lib¬ 
eration. He feels that we are living 
in an age in which "sexual roles are 
defined for us by those who want to 
sell us their products. The strain of 
trying to live up to these exaggerated 
male and female ideals hurts every¬ 
one, especially the young, and frag¬ 
ments human relationships. 

"I guess I'm an ad hoc radical 
now, doing my best to explain some 
of my views in my writing. We need 
serious reform, and human relation¬ 
ships have to be re-thought and ce¬ 
mented. I think even the silent maj¬ 
ority is unhappy. They have lousy 
schools, inflation, and high taxes. If 
they knew the real reasons for these 
conditions they'd be the allies of the 
left. I know I've been accused of sell¬ 
ing out and it bothers me, but I think 
worrying about yourown moral purity 
too much is egocentric, and I feel I 
am reaching people." 

Kunen's plans upon graduation in¬ 
clude marriage to Laura, who is pres¬ 
ently a junior at City College. Kunen 
started going with her during the 
Spring of 1968, and she appears in 
Strawberry Statement and other 
Kunen writings as a spirited if 
shadowy young lady. 

Kunen intends to stay in the city 
next year while Laura finishes school, 
and try to find out if he "really can 
write" and make the move to fiction. 
"I'm not sure, though, that there is 
any difference between reality and 
fantasy. If writing doesn't turn out to 
be my thing I'll try to go to law 
school. So far things have been maybe 
too easy and I've had more requests 
for articles than I can handle. I want 
to see if I deserve it. I haven't made 
a lot of money really, but it's a lot 
for a student. I don't think my life 
style has changed, though. Laura and 
I still take the subway." 

At the moment Kunen is observ¬ 
ing a moratorium on writing and 
dedicating himself "to the business 
of graduating this June." Of Col¬ 
umbia he says, "It's just my environ¬ 
ment and it's hard for me to have an 
overview. People despair of there 
ever being change here, and the 
charges we made in 1968 are still 
true. Columbia remains a racist and 
elitist institution." 


28 





jBONNIE FREER 


GREEN BEER AND 
CHERRY PIE 

Barnard's new McIntosh Center, 
which opened last fall, has already 
acquired an affectionate nickname 
among some of its habitues. They 
call it The Big Apple. (McIntosh. 
Apple. Get it?) That's the kind of 
place it is. 

Never before has Barnard had 
anything faintly resembling a student 
center, but perhaps the wait was 
worth it. McIntosh is great. Although 
some people still seem unaware of 
its existence, the Center already is 
making a difference in student life 
at Columbia. Said a College junior, 
interrupted in the McIntosh lounge 
while wrestling with the crossword 
puzzle in the New York Times, "I live 
over here now." 

Before, undergraduates at Col¬ 
umbia and Barnard had three prin¬ 
cipal meeting grounds on campus: 
the library; the College's own Woll- 
man Student Center (which requires 
the girls to take the initiative in cross¬ 
ing Broadway); or—perish the thought 
— the mixer. But McIntosh is more 
than a place to meet. It's also a nice 


place to be. It's the sort of place 
where one can even imagine a pro¬ 
fessor joining his students for a cup 
of coffee without feeling like a tres¬ 
passer. 

The Center's warm ambiance is 
due largely to its physical character¬ 
istics. Designed by the firm of Phila¬ 
delphia architect Vincent G. Kling, 
Class of 1938, it consists of two 
stories. Facilities include a four-lane 
bowling alley, club rooms, the office 
of the Barnard newspaper, piano 
practice rooms, a recreation room, 
and a TV room (replete with wide¬ 
screen color TV). But the heart of the 
center is the first-floor lounge-exhibit- 
snack bar area, which ingeniously 
combines openness and intimacy. 

Unimpeded by any intervening 
walls, this area stretches the width of 
the building, checked only by an ex¬ 
panse of glass at either end. The re¬ 
sult is a luxury of space rare in New 
York City. But one does get a sense 
of separate "rooms" within that space. 
Sections are suggested by uncrowded 
groupings of furniture, in warm tones 
of yellow, orange, and velvety brown; 
by moveable panels on which student 
art is displayed; by a strategically 
placed planter full of glossy tropical 
foliage. The stepped ceiling also de¬ 
fines the space, as it changes height 


from section to section. The overall 
arrangement makes it possible for 
individuals and groups to be alone 
and together at the same time. 

The Center also owes its success 
as a gathering place for the Columbia 
community to the efforts of a busy, 
inventive Activities Council, whose 
members include three Columbia Col¬ 
lege representatives. (The others are 
all Barnard girls.) The tactic of the 
Council has been to ensure attend¬ 
ance by presenting free, small,special- 
appeal activities rather than risk costly, 
poorly attended extravaganzas. Some 
events are regular features: the Thurs¬ 
day night open house, with music by 
semi-professional student groups; the 
TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) gather¬ 
ing; weekly coed bowling and bridge 
nights. The committee tries for un¬ 
usual programs, as well as the more 
conventional poetry readings, films, 
concerts, and lectures. Recent events 
included a square dance, a cherry pie¬ 
eating contest on Feb. 22, and a green 
beer party on Saint Patrick's Day. 
Evidently some suggestions are con¬ 
sidered a bit too far out, however. 
At a recent meeting of the Council, 
one of the Columbia boys brought 
up the possibility of sponsoring a 
coed skinny-dipping party. It was 
vetoed. 


OPENNESS AND INTIMACY: Students relax in the spacious first-floor lounge of McIntosh Center. 



29 











SISTER TO SISTER: Political exhortation on the wall of Barnard's Altschul Hall. 


LIBERTY, 

EQUALITY, 

SORORITY 

The mere mention of Women's 
Liberation brings to many a male mind 
a vision of leather-clad Amazons, 
stomping around a huge bonfire 
kindled with bras and lipsticks, where 
de-girdled Miss America candidates 
frizzle at the stake. 

Women liberationists don't carry 
on in nearly so spectacular a fashion. 
That doesn't mean, however, that the 
ladies don't mean business. For on 
Morningside, as elsewhere, these de¬ 
termined—and often attractive—young 
feminists are attacking the established 
order on a variety of fronts. 

In December, for instance, Co¬ 
lumbia Women's Liberation published 
a preliminary report charging the Uni¬ 
versity with discrimination against 
women in hiring practices, tenure ap¬ 
pointments, and salaries. The report, 
which was authored by several fe¬ 
male faculty members and graduate 
students, sets forth some impressive 
statistics in support of the allegation. 
Of the full professors on the faculty 
(including Barnard), only 5.8 per cent 
are women. Although there are more 


women, percentage-wise, among the 
lower ranks, most of them teach in 
General Studies or at Barnard, where 
salaries are lower. Twenty-four per¬ 
cent of Columbia's doctorates are 
awarded to women, but only two per 
cent of the tenured graduate faculty 
are female. "We are puzzled," com¬ 
ment the authors, "by the Graduate 
Faculties' commitment to train women 
but not to hire them." 

Dean of the Graduate Faculties 
George Fraenkel maintains that he is 
unaware of any discrimination, but 
concedes that "it would be naive to 
assume that vestiges of discrimination 
do not remain." 

"The report speaks for itself," re¬ 
sponds Assistant Professor of Art His¬ 
tory Anne Harris, one of the authors. 
Mrs. Harris adds that the University 
also exploits women by hiring them 
as part-time teachers, when in fact 
they do as much work as full-time 
faculty who earn twice as much or 
more. "And even when a woman is 
hired full-time," she charges, "the ten¬ 
dency is to shove her over to Barnard, 
whose lower salaries imply that it is 
less valuable to teach women than to 
teach men." (Barnard salaries are in¬ 
deed lower than Columbia's—not, ex¬ 
plains Barnard Dean of Faculty Henry 
Boorse, because Barnard is a women's 
college, but because liberal arts col¬ 
leges across the nation pay less than 
universities. One Barnard teacher ob¬ 


served dryly, "That type of rationaliz¬ 
ing distinction doesn't pay the rent.") 

Membership in Columbia Wom¬ 
en's Lib is open to any woman associa¬ 
ted with the University, and its present 
register of about 45 regulars includes 
faculty, students, and staff. Barnard 
has its own group, but the members 
frequently participate in the meetings 
and activities of the Columbia move¬ 
ment. 

Concern is by no means limited to 
issues touching the faculty. Two uni¬ 
versity senators, graduate student Sally 
Guttmacher and English preceptor 
Katherine Ellis, have recently proposed 
that the Senate establish a commission 
on the status of women at Columbia, 
to study discrimination at all levels of 
the University. The proposal has been 
accepted in principle, but a contro¬ 
versy has erupted over the commit¬ 
tee's composition. Some administra¬ 
tors are said to believe that most of 
the members should be males, be¬ 
cause women will not be sufficiently 
objective. That, observes Miss Ellis, 
"is like saying that black problems and 
needs can best be judged by whites." 

Before naming the committee, the 
Senate convened a series of hearings 
to determine what grievances re¬ 
quired attention. Administrators who 
attended the first of these hearings, on 
March 11, got an earful. One by one, 
women rose to testify about alleged 
acts of discrimination in the dispens- 


30 










ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN: Prof. Anne Harris 
accuses Columbia of exploitation. 



WOMEN'S LIBERATION: 
A Thursday night strategy session. 


ing of jobs and fellowships. Fellow¬ 
ship practices came under particularly 
heavy attack. Departments were ac¬ 
cused of dividing folders into four 
categories—men, single women, mar¬ 
ried women, women with children— 
and awarding fellowships in descend¬ 
ing order until the money ran out. 
According to some witnesses, attrac¬ 
tive single women have been told that 
they were refused fellowships because 
they would probably marry and leave 
school. Actually, this can be a self- 
fulfilling prophecy, at least as to the 
latter part. Denial of funds can force 
women, single or married, to abandon 
their studies, especially since they find 
it more difficult than men to obtain 
well-paying outside jobs. 

Women liberationists, meanwhile, 
have not been content to wait upon 
the Senate, and have set up commit¬ 
tees of their own. The purpose of 
these committees is to prepare pre¬ 
liminary reports which will publicize 
the areas of concern and give rough 
estimates of the number of women 
affected. They will deal with such di¬ 
verse issues as a proposed day care 
center for the children of faculty, 
students, and staff; health programs; 
discrimination in hirings and promo¬ 
tions; and curriculum. 

Curriculum committee chairman 
Kate Millet, a part-time instructor in 
Barnard's philosophy department, be¬ 
lieves that women's studies have been 


appallingly neglected. Standard works 
in history, philosophy, and psychology 
scarcely reflect the presence of 
women. And when women have been 
dealt with, as for example by Freud, 
they have been summarily (and con¬ 
veniently) dismissed as some sort of 
male extension, the lifted rib grown 
passive and servile, languishing for¬ 
ever in shock from penis-deprivation. 

Miss Millett and her committee 
will propose an extensive program 
consisting of several courses: for in¬ 
stance, a history course which will ex¬ 
plore such topics as patriarchal social 
structure and the code of romantic 
love; a study of feminist movements; 
and a survey of women's legal rights. 

Women liberationists attach con¬ 
siderable importance to educating the 
general public, and particularly other 
women. One way in which they do 
this is by calling attention to media 
practices which stereotype women as 
house-keeping machines or sex sym¬ 
bols. On February 11, for instance, 
Spectator published a letter signed by 
both Barnard and Columbia Women's 
Lib, complaining of two recent ad¬ 
vertisements which contained some 
rather explicit sexual imagery. The 
same day, liberationists picketed rep¬ 
resentatives of Glamor magazine, who 
came to campus to recruit models for 
its August college issue. 

Four days later, on Saturday the 
15th, Columbia Women's Liberation 


conducted its most ambitious prosely¬ 
tizing effort of the year. This was to 
co-sponsor, together with the New 
University Conference, an all-day 
teach-in on women's rights. The teach- 
in, which was attended by some 800 
people, roughly a quarter of whom 
were male, included panel discus¬ 
sions, workshops, and a series of short 
plays. 

Barnard placement officer Jane 
Gould is no stranger to job discrimina¬ 
tion, which, she charges, “exists in 
almost every field." But she also 
points out that there is another side to 
the coin. “Once we shame a company 
into recruiting women for manage¬ 
ment positions," she complains, “we 
often can't come up with an enthusias¬ 
tic girl." This is because “most girls 
feel a conflict between a traditional 
role and a career role. Priority is 
usually given to marriage, and there 
is a tremendous fear among the girls 
of being considered aggressive and 
unfeminine.“ 

Legislation, she feels, is only part 
of the answer. “It can at least provide 
a climate in which change can take 
place. But most importantly, women 
must raise their own levels of aspira¬ 
tion. For it is only when women ac¬ 
cept their full share of responsibility 
that significant changes will occur." 

That pretty much sums up what 
Women's Liberation at Columbia and 
elsewhere is all about. 


I 


31 


BONNIE FREER 












BUBBLES AND 
BRICKBATS 

Columbia's incoming President, 
William J. McGill, dropped into the 
city for an extended weekend early 
last April. Dr. McGill, who describes 
himself as "gregarious," survived a 
frenetic round of speeches, interviews, 
and conferences, and even found time 
to meet with students informally in 
Hewitt Lounge at Ferris Booth Hall. 
There, he received a taste of what to 
expect next year, as radicals inter¬ 
rupted him with frequent heckling, to 
the visible annoyance of other stu¬ 
dents who were prevented from ask¬ 
ing questions. The radicals, mainly 
from S.D.S., peppered away with a 
barrage of inquiries about exploitation 
of campus workers, University expan¬ 
sionism in the neighborhood, and 
the family of Charles Johnson, a cus¬ 
todial employee killed in an elevator 
accident more than a year ago. By all 
accounts, the administrator gave as 
good as he got. When an undergradu¬ 
ate asked him whether he supported 
repression of the Black Panthers, he 
replied, "You might as well ask me 
whether I beat my wife." Immediately, 
a girl demanded to know whether he 
was a male chauvinist. Eventually, Dr. 
McGill became nettled. "I refuse to 
answer speeches," he told a protester. 
"Go give your speeches somewhere 
else." One student, bored with it all, 
wafted soap-bubbles in the direction 
of the President-elect. 



BUBBLY VISITOR: Soap bubble drifts on collision course 
toward incoming President William McGill. 


FREE LEARNERS 

Tacked on the fourth floor cor¬ 
ridor walls of the Paris Hotel on West 
End Avenue and 97th Street are huge 
unframed abstract watercolors and 
hand scrawled notices of communal 
dinners and group encounter meet¬ 
ings. The Columbia and Barnard stu¬ 
dents who live in the hall's dowdy 
cubicle rooms are not furtively flout¬ 
ing parietals. They are all part of the 
Experimental College, technically a 
section of the Barnard philosophy de¬ 
partment. 

The purpose of the College is to 
create a warm, communal environ¬ 


ment, conducive to learning, and to 
explore new methods of education. 
Barnard has assigned philosophy in¬ 
structor Kate Millet to the group. 
Columbia has supplied no-one, but 
Dr. Paul Lippmann, a part-time lec¬ 
turer in Columbia's psychology de¬ 
partment, works with the students 
on a voluntary basis. 

Participants receive three points 
of credit each semester, and take an 
otherwise normal course load at Bar¬ 
nard or Columbia. The College has 
approximately 40 members, including 
some seminary and General Studies 
students. 

Most of the Columbia students 


are sophomores who found the dorm¬ 
itory living of their freshman year 
cold and sterile. They never knew 
their neighbors well, and the resi¬ 
dence halls last year provided few 
common lounges where students 
could meet and chat. 

Members have worked hard to 
transform the musty fourth floor of 
the Paris Hotel into an inviting com¬ 
mune. They have converted a bath¬ 
tub into a makeshift kitchen sink, 
and outfitted the small adjacent com¬ 
mon room with a refrigerator and a 
pair of ancient electric hot plates. A 
formica table top placed on the floor 
serves as a common dining table for 


32 


RICHARD HOWARD 






as many as eight or ten people at once. 

Despite their efforts their cramped 
common space has probably not con¬ 
tributed as much to an esprit de corps 
as have their constant meetings. They 
gather almost every night to discuss 
their feelings, projects, and goals. 

All are disenchanted with Col¬ 
umbia and Barnard education, which 
they feel is too impersonal, too struc¬ 
tured, too compartmentalized, too 
unrelated to their lives. They rail 
against the division of subjects by 
departments, and instruction "by the 
bell": that is, the allocation of a spec¬ 
ified time-period to each class. Both, 
they feel, are arbitrary practices which 
discourage learning. 

They also complain of the lack 
of interaction between students and 
the professor, or among the students 
themselves. Some point out that the 
very physical layout of Hamilton Hall 
classrooms makes discussion next to 
impossible. The seats are in a fixed 
position, all facing the lecturer on his 
podium. One sophomore asserts that 
students don't even listen to one an¬ 
other, except to ascertain whether the 
previous speaker has finished so that 
they, too, can raise their hands and 
make comments which will impress 


the teacher. 

As a result, they maintain, the 
brightest students are uninterested in 
their studies, and are turning instead 
to political action or drugs. Several 
claimed that before coming to the 
Paris Hotel they had never witnessed 
a serious bull session related to any 
classroom work. 

The Experimental College, in con¬ 
trast, seeks to foster what members 
call "free learning." Students should 
learn, not because they have to in 
order to get a job or stay out of the 
army, but because they —and their 
teachers —are involved in the sub¬ 
ject matter and in one another. 

So far the group has had only 
limited success. Miss Millet praises 
the members for being "close to liv¬ 
ing their ideas" but criticizes some for 
their unwillingness to take time to 
prepare for academic discussions. 
Dr. Lippmann points out that under¬ 
graduates can't determine their intel¬ 
lectual needs without guidance, and 
blames Columbia for not providing 
faculty. On the positive side, both 
teachers agree that participants are 
more committed to learning than 
most Columbia men. 

Interest has picked up since the 


first semester, when members were 
busy "adjusting" to one another. This 
semester's courses include ecology, 
creative writing, photography, and 
math. Attendance varies, and many 
students study more than one sub¬ 
ject. 

Columbia faculty often speak 
disparagingly of the program, re¬ 
ferring to it as a glorified group 
therapy session. Experimental Col¬ 
lege students are encouraging visits 
from Columbia teachers and admin¬ 
istrators, in the hope of eliciting a 
more favorable reaction and perhaps 
even financial support. At present 
Columbia gives no support of any 
kind, beyond the allotment of three 
points of academic credit. 

A committee of Barnard faculty, 
headed by sociologist Gladys Meyer, 
is presently evaluating the work of 
the Experimental College. Its findings 
will help determine whether Barnard 
will continue to sponsor the group. 
But many members believe that Bar¬ 
nard alone cannot keep the program 
on its feet. It will depend for survival 
upon a commitment from Columbia 
as well. 


FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Experimental College students share meals and vibrations. 





33 







GADFLY TO THE 
FACULTY 

Students frequently complain, at 
Columbia and elsewhere, that depart¬ 
ments give insufficient attention to 
teaching in determining whom to 
recommend for promotion and ten¬ 
ure. Department chairmen often plead 
in defense that they lack adequate in¬ 
formation to evaluate the classroom 
performance of their staff. Another 
long-standing grievance is that official 
sources—catalogs, faculty advisers—are 
not informative enough to help un¬ 
dergraduates plan their curriculum in¬ 
telligently. 

In 1963, Collimbia students from 
the Ted Kremer Society addressed 
themselves to these problems by pub¬ 
lishing a course evaluation booklet. 
To judge from its contents, its princi¬ 
pal purpose was to aid undergraduates 
in choosing programs, rather than to 
assist departments in rating faculty. 
The booklet consisted of a few mim¬ 
eographed sheets. Only courses were 
evaluated, not individual instructors. 
Moreover, the authors did not use 
questionnaires. Instead, they appeared 
to base their sketchy summaries upon 
their own experiences or upon con¬ 
versations with their classmates. The 
first booklet was distributed free of 
charge. The following year, the editors 
apologized in their introduction for 
instituting "a nominal fee.” 

From these modest beginnings, the 
course evaluation booklet has grown 
into a handsomely printed volume of 
over 200 pages. The 1970 edition, 
which sells for $1.50, is the most am¬ 
bitious and sophisticated to date. Like 
its immediate predecessor, it relies 
upon extensive questionnaires which 
are processed by a computer. A num¬ 
ber grade, on a one to five scale, is 
assigned separately to the instructor, 
to the course, and to the subject. The 
lectures are broken down for analysis 
into four divisions: interest, content, 
clarity and speaking style. The read¬ 
ings are rated according to interest 
and content. The grades are followed 
by anywhere from a paragraph to a 
full page of text, from which the flip 
humor of earlier editions has disap¬ 
peared. There is a separate section for 
each department, often prefaced by 


a survey of the departmental offerings 
as a whole. 

Moreover, editor-in-chief Leslie 
H. Lepow '71 and his staff of Barnard 
and Columbia undergraduates have 
responded to the most persistent criti¬ 
cisms of the 1969 volume, which were 
that the ratings were based upon an 
insufficient number of completed 
questionnaires, and the reader was 
not told how many students in each 
class had participated in the survey. 
"Last year,” explains Lepow, "we 
passed out questionnaires by mail, 
and as a result the answers often re¬ 
flected the polar extremes, because 
only those students who felt very 
strongly one way or another took the 
trouble to reply.” This year, the staff 
enlisted the cooperation of teachers 
in distributing the questionnaires dur¬ 
ing classes. The new method repre¬ 
sented an improvement over the old 
one, but was not entirely satisfactory 
because of the large number of stu¬ 
dents who cut. To deal with this prob¬ 
lem, the editors list in parentheses at 
the end of each evaluation the number 
of students in the course and the num¬ 
ber who responded. 

Many teachers complained that 
the 1969 guide was too harsh with in¬ 
experienced instructors. (Others urged 
that older faculty members, nearing 
retirement, be treated more gently.) 
Lepow has acknowledged that he is 
"concerned about holding people up 
to ridicule.” While he maintains that 
the advantages of frankness outweigh 
the disadvantages, he indicated prior 
to publication that he would try to 
soften some of the brickbats. In the 
main, the '70 edition is more sedate 
than its predecessor, but some of the 
comments are quite pungent. "For all 
of his enthusiasm and good humor,” 
it is said of one teacher, "(he) is un¬ 
inspiring, incoherent, and often dis¬ 
organized.” More frequently, the 
authors simply reprint anwers from 
the questionnaires, although Lepow 
admits that there is sometimes a ten¬ 
dency to use the more colorful and 
sensational quotes. 

In spite of the panning which 
some teachers receive, the Course 
Guide is not a hatchet job. The in¬ 
quiries on the questionnaires are 
thoughtful and searching, and the edi¬ 
tors have obviously done their best to 
put together a balanced, representa¬ 


tive, and useful analysis. 

To judge from faculty reactions, 
they appear to have succeeded. It is 
too early, of course, for feedback on 
the 1970 edition. However, shortly 
after the publication of the 1969 book¬ 
let, the editors dispatched letters to 
over 200 instructors, inviting them to 
evaluate the evaluators. Although 
many expressed reservations about the 
validity of the statistical methodology, 
most were favorably impressed by the 
work as a whole. One reply, from a 
teacher who received a mild panning, 
was typical. "I found last year's guide 
accurate and helpful in reference to 
my own courses,” he wrote. "Keep 
up the good work.” 

Other criticisms centered upon 
the omission of the second semester 
of two-semester courses, and the use 
of letter grades for teachers. "I find 
it odd,” observed one department 
chairman, "that during the time that 
you were for the first time grading 
them, students generally were advo¬ 
cating and petitioning for less empha¬ 
sis on grades, pass-fail options, or no 
grades at all.” To meet the first ob¬ 
jection, the editors hope to publish, 
for the first time, a December sup¬ 
plement if funds permit. The letter 
grades have been replaced by num¬ 
bers, and a chart at the front of the 
book indicates what percentile the 
number represents. 

Most instructors fared reasonably 
well at the hands of their students, a 
result which may surprise those who 
have heard or read of the supposed 
alienation of the young from campus 
authority figures. On a five point scale, 
Columbia and Barnard teachers re¬ 
ceived a median grade of 3.9. Lepow 
suggests that the 1969 guide was at 
least partly responsible for the high 
quality of instruction. "In one psy¬ 
chology course,” he points out, "the 
instructor is now using different texts, 
emphasizing different material, per¬ 
mitting more discussion, and making 
himself more accessible after class.” 
Several teachers acknowledged in 
their replies to last year's editors that 
the booklet had stung them into mak¬ 
ing changes in the readings or their 
own techniques. In at least a few 
cases, they appear to have profited 
from suggestions. "In 1968-69,” re¬ 
ports the guide, "Mr.'s stu¬ 

dents found him neither very stinou- 


34 






lating nor very necessary. This year, 
things seem much better." 

The booklet has become the 
Kremer Society's most ambitious proj¬ 
ect. To some, it appears that Zeus 
may one day swallow Kronos. Last 
year, for the first time, Kremer en¬ 
gaged an outsider, Arthur Kokot '70, 
as its editor-in-chief. Lepow, the pres¬ 
ent editor, also does not belong to the 
organization. The Society, however, 
still supplies most of the staff, and 
continues to sponsor the publication 
in its role of gadfly to the faculty. 

WHOLE MEN OR 
HALF-PEOPLE? 

Too often, Columbia undergrad¬ 
uates see little connection between 
their studies and the "real world." 
"We are half-people here at Colum¬ 
bia," accuses Michael Merrill '70. Ac-' 
cording to him, there are three classes 
of people in the College: full-time stu¬ 
dents, who go through the ritual of 
learning with no awareness of the so¬ 
cial significance of their subjects; full¬ 
time activists, whose attitude toward 
intellectual inquiry is, "Cut the bull, 
it's time to act"; and people who 
split their lives between unrelated 
studying and activism. "None of us is 
a full-time student activist," Merrill 
laments. 

Merrill, a history and economics 
major, is president of a group which 
is trying to correct the situation he de¬ 
scribes. Called the Student Forum, the 
organization is dedicated to making 
education relevant. The slew of pro¬ 
grams the members plan and carry out 
is aimed at supplying Columbians with 
mental ammunition for attacking real 
problems. 

Not that the Forum defines rele¬ 
vance narrowly. "What we're fighting 
is the lack of spirit and sense in learn¬ 
ing," explains vice president John 
Linder '71. "We don't oppose any par¬ 
ticular academic discipline, but we do 
feel it's useless for people to learn 
things if they see no avenue of appli¬ 
cation for them." The wide range of 
Forum concerns is indicated by the 
variety of their programs. A recent 
week's blitz included a Claude Renoir 
film about 17th-century priest-re¬ 


former Saint Vincent de Paul; a me¬ 
morial to Malcolm X, at which Harlem 
organizer and City Councilman Jesse 
Gray spoke; a lecture on "The Nature 
and Use of Groups in Mathematics" 
and another on "Rousseau and the En¬ 
lightenment"; a panel critique of 
Arthur Jenssen's controversial theory 
that race influences intelligence; and 
a seminar discussion of environmental 
problems, led by physicist and Nobel 
Prize laureate Polykarp Kusch. Kusch 
made the sort of statement Forum 
members would certainly second, 
when he told students, "If you really 
want to understand environmental 
problems, you need to know about 
everything: economics, aesthetics, 
math, science, politics—it's all impor¬ 
tant." 

The Forum is in its third year of 
operation. Merrill, from Boise, Idaho, 
was one of its founders. As a fresh¬ 
man, he became discouraged by the 
"mindless activity" of some of the so¬ 
cially and politically oriented campus 
groups. (For instance, he characterizes 
SDS at that time as a "convention 
from the Tower of Babel.") He was 
also appalled at what he described as 
the dearth of opportunities, both in 
and out of the classroom, for objec¬ 
tive examination of contemporary 
problems. 

So Merrill got together with an¬ 
other discontented young man, Bruce 
Kanze '69, to recruit speakers on is¬ 
sues from the war on poverty to the 
war in Vietnam. The programs got 
underway in the fall of 1967. Speakers 
included not only experts from the 
academic world, but also from the 
world beyond the campus: a local 
labor union leader, a public school 
superintendent, a city welfare official. 
The bi-weekly programs, supple¬ 
mented by films of social significance, 
were organized by a total staff of five. 

The Forum has gone through a lot 
of changes since then. The group now 
has its own sunny offices in a 
Columbia-donated apartment, fur¬ 
nished primarily with wall-to-wall 
magazines, books, and copies of the 
Forum's weekly newsletter. These 
days, the 25 students on the staff, 
headed by a three-man executive com¬ 
mittee, put on five, six, and seven pro¬ 
grams every week. Most important, 
the focus of the Forum has sharp¬ 
ened. 


"That first year, we saw ourselves 
as filling the gaps in a Columbia ed¬ 
ucation," Merrill remembers. They 
came to realize that the job was a bit 
bigger than they had thought, and 
that their shotgun coverage of social 
issues wasn't enough. They decided 
to concentrate on a single issue, cov¬ 
ering its different aspects in a com¬ 
prehensive series of discussions, lec¬ 
tures, and films. Their choice, a logical 
one with Harlem at Columbia's door¬ 
step, was "The Black Experience in 
the U.S." The 35-lecture series met a 
real need at Columbia last year: al¬ 
though black studies courses were 
being planned for the College, none 
was offered in the fall of 1968. The 
group was highly praised by Richard 
Whittemore, chairman of the Social 
Studies Department at Teachers Col¬ 
lege: "Establishments have a way, like 
the British general Loudon, of spend¬ 
ing all their time getting ready to be¬ 
gin. And the Forum has just gone 
ahead and made a beginning." 

Now that the College offers 
courses in Afro-American history and 
civilizations, the Forum has gone on 
to other issues. One current theme is 
"Sense and Nonsense." Lecturers in 
this series expose the myths in their 
own special fields of knowledge. An¬ 
other program is designed to supple¬ 
ment and encourage discussion of 
what students learn in Columbia's re¬ 
quired CC, humanities, and math and 
science courses. Social commentary 
films are also a regular Forum fea¬ 
ture. 

The lectures and films have their 
roots in the very first Forum programs. 
New types of programs have been 
added. When Merrill and Kanze be¬ 
gan their crusade, they believed that 
informed students would become in¬ 
volved students. They hoped that their 
programs would provide a basis for 
rational action and change. It hasn't 
happened, at least not in any dramatic 
way. Part of the problem has been 
student participation. Even though all 
Forum programs are free, attendance 
is never overwhelming, unless some¬ 
one controversial happens to be 
speaking. And students who do attend 
the lectures rarely perceive the impli¬ 
cations for their own lives. 

The new Forum projects are de¬ 
signed to reach students in a personal 
way, to get them directly involved. 


35 






GREASE REVISITED: Sha Na Na doesn't quite have that Ivy look. 


Small seminars give participants a 
chance to research and formulate 
ideas about topics which interest 
them. "Blacks and the Labor Move¬ 
ment" was the subject of one such 
seminar in the fall. Workshops re¬ 
quire written work of their members. 
Recent ones have been specifically 
student-oriented, and have dealt with 
students vis-a-vis the war, the com¬ 
munity, and racism. Another project, 
entitled "Twenty Blocks Apart," has 
student writers, researchers, and 
photographers creating a photo-essay 
on the community around Columbia. 
The Forum even sponsors an oral his¬ 
tory project. Tape recorders at the 
ready, students go forth to interview 
their fellow students about black- 
white relations at Columbia, or the 
counseling service, or the effect of the 
draft on their lives. 

The administration evidently 
thinks highly of the Forum's gargan¬ 
tuan efforts. When the group ran low 
on cash this winter, President Cordier 
dipped into the University's emer¬ 
gency fund for $8500, an unprece¬ 
dented action, since the fund had 
never been used to finance a student 
activity. Money is a touchy subject 
with the Forum. Although most speak¬ 
ers volunteer their services, the Forum 
must still pay for their transportation. 
Other costs—film rentals, advertising, 
office supplies and research materials, 
publication of the newsletter—bring 
total expenses for this year to $40,000. 
Although supported by Columbia, 
Barnard, Teachers College, and the 
National Science Foundation, the or¬ 
ganization is still short $16,000. 

Still the work goes on. For the 
Forum zealots are convinced, with 
Merrill, that the Forum's success lies 
in developing "whole people: serious 
students, actively committed to learn¬ 
ing and to changing the world." 

THE DUCKTAIL 
SYNDROME 

A new singing group is wowing 
critics and audiences with its rendi¬ 
tions of early rock 'n' roll hits. The 
12 members call themselves Sha Na 
Na. 

Their secret of success seems to 


be a combination of a high-quality 
imitation of the sound of the fifties 
with a high-camp parody of the look 
of the period. At the start of a Sha 
Na Na performance, viewers are 
treated to an exhibit of nine high 
school hoods, circa 1955. It's all there: 
the ducktail coifs gleaming with hair 
dressing, which earned their wearers 
the appellation "greaser"; the tight 
black pants, the white socks, the 
pointy-toed boots, the black leather 
jackets, and the tee shirts with sleeves 
rolled up to let the muscle show; the 
posturing and surliness that let you 
know they're cool, man. They are 
joined by three glittering idols in 
gold lame suits, veed deep in front 
to reveal bare, virile chests. They 
begin their first number, displaying 
the elaborate choreography which ac¬ 
companies their singing, taking off 
on the styles of bygone performers. 
All this provokes great hilarity. But 
their playing and singing are faithful 
enough to the original versions to 
bring tears to the eyes of the young 
matron who was one of the pony¬ 
tailed screamers who mobbed Elvis 
Presley's concerts. 

What does Sha Na Na have to do 
with Columbia? Take a close look 
beneath the grease. Believe it or not, 


it's the Columbia College Kingsmen, 
incognito. In their public guise, the 
Kingsmen, who include 11 Columbia 
undergraduates and an odd man from 
Brooklyn College, have recently per¬ 
formed at concerts throughout the 
country. They have appeared on all 
the leading late-night TV variety shows 
and have cut a record ("Rock & Roll 
Is Here to Stay!" on the Kama Sutra 
label). A measure of their popularity 
is the fact that they hold the record 
for encores at the Fillmore West, 
probably the most famous rock con¬ 
cert hall in America. 

The Kingsmen have come a long 
way since their humble beginnings, 
in 1949, as an informal group of un¬ 
dergraduates who now and then got 
together to sing for their friends at 
dances, dinners, and parties. By 1960, 
the group had evolved into a stable, 
semi-professional organization, sing¬ 
ing ballads, college songs, barbershop 
medleys, and comic-novelty numbers 
at Columbia and other schools. The 
group used no musical instruments at 
all until 1962, when guitars were in¬ 
troduced to back up the folk songs 
which were being added to the rep¬ 
ertoire. 

The saga of Sha Na Na actually 
begins about four years ago. It was 


36 











then that the group began singing a 
few of the old rock numbers, recalls 
Robert Leonard '70, a member of the 
Kingsmen since his freshman year and 
now president. But things didn't really 
get rolling until last spring, when, 
with a command of perhaps five of 
the fifties hits, the Kingsmen gave a 
performance on campus and billed it 
as an Oldies Concert. Fraternity men, 
given advance notice, got right into 
the spirit of the evening, many of 
them coming dressed as greasers. 
The Lion's Den, where the concert 
took place, was packed in violation 
of the fire laws. 

Enter George Leonard, a man 
who knows a good thing when he 
sees it. According to Rob, his brother 
George, Class of 67, was the entrepre¬ 
neur who wheeled and dealed the 
group to fame. "Boys, the time is 
ripe—I am going to make you rock 
'n' roll stars," promised George. And 
he proceeded to do so. He costumed 
the group, choreographed their songs, 
and coached them in new numbers. 
Two more Columbia concerts were 
arranged: one indoors, publicized as 
"The Glory That Was Grease," the 
other on Low Plaza, called "Grease 
Under the Stars." Both were huge 
successes. 

Meanwhile the group had begun 
playing in clubs. They recruited a 
bass guitarist and a drummer from 
Columbia and a lead guitarist from 
Brooklyn College. They were out¬ 
fitted with electronic equipment by 
Kingsman Dave Garrett's father, who 
now enjoys the status of patron 
saint. They added a manager, Ed 
Goodgold, who graduated from the 
College in 1965. They culled their 
professional pseudonym from one of 
the oldies they sing ("Get a job, sha 
na na na sha na na na na.") And be¬ 
fore you could say "good golly, Miss 
Molly," they were in the big time. 

Now that they're there, they lead 
rather schizophrenic lives, attending 
classes during the week, and going 
out on the road for weekend and 
vacation engagements. One of the 
first things many adults want to know 
is how their grades have weathered 
this grueling routine. Rob Leonard, 
himself a straight Dean's List soci¬ 
ology major, claims the group has 
maintained higher than average 
marks. 


Naturally, the Kingsmen's rela¬ 
tionship with Columbia has changed 
slightly since they went professional. 
They no longer receive financial sup¬ 
port as a College activity. (In 1962, 
the Kingsmen charged between $75 
and $100 for an off-campus per¬ 
formance; Sha Na Na makes at least 
$3,000 per performance, not to men¬ 
tion the $183,000 minimum they're 
guaranteed from their record.) But 
they haven't forgotten their school, 
and have already given two free con¬ 
certs here this year. 

After this year? Four of the mem¬ 
bers will graduate from Columbia. 
As for long-term plans, the group in¬ 
cludes an aspiring doctor,an electrical 
engineer, a linguistics expert, a writer, 
and an actor. But for the present, 
says Rob, it looks as though the boys 
will stay together as long as they ap¬ 
peal to the public. 

And appeal they do, to almost 
every age group. To those who re¬ 
member the fifties, they are a nos¬ 
talgic reminder of things past; to the 
young, they are a new discovery. 
(Some youthful admirers are even 
under the impression that they write 
their own songs.) There are detractors 
who see the Sha Na Na phenomenon 
as a manifestation of reactionary de¬ 
cadence, as an expression of an un¬ 
healthy desire to return to a less 
complicated era, or as an idealization 
of white hoodlumism. But to those 
less easily alarmed, Sha Na Na seems 
to be a loving look — part tribute, part 
spoof —at rock's origins. More than 
that, it's just plain fun, with a melody 
you can hum and a good strong beat. 


RETIRING LADY 

206 Hamilton doesn't seem the 
same. 

Mae Carnesi, the pleasant-voiced 
lady who served as receptionist for 
seven Deans of the College, retired 
on February 27, 1970, so that she 
could spend more time at home with 
her husband. Four days earlier, she 
was honored at a gathering of scores 
of faculty, administrators, and alumni 
who had worked with her over the 
years. 

Mrs. Carnesi came to Columbia in 
1931 as a telephone operator in Low 


Library. Before that, she had spent 
seven years with the New York Tele¬ 
phone Company. In September, 1946, 
she ran across Dean of the College 
Harry Carman and Associate Dean 
Nicholas M. McKnight during her 
lunch hour. She knew both men 
slightly from having spoken to them 
over the telephone. A new switch¬ 
board had just been installed in the 
Dean's Office for the four people who 
then worked there: Deans Carman 
and McKnight, Henry Coleman, now 
Dean of Freshmen, and an administra¬ 
tive assistant. Dean McKnight de¬ 
scribed it to her, and invited her to 
take charge of it. She remained at 
Hamilton for nearly a quarter-century, 
answering telephones and greeting 
the thousands of visitors who came to 
see the various deans. 

Since her arrival, the Dean's Of¬ 
fice staff has burgeoned in size from 
four to twenty, including secretaries, 
and has overflowed its old one-room 
quarters in 206. Gone, too, is the in¬ 
formality of earlier days, when Acting 
Dean McKnight held open house from 
ten to noon each morning for any 
student who wished to see him. In 
matters of dress and decorum, how¬ 
ever, the pendulum has swung in the 
other directiori: from rigid formality 
to permissiveness. Mrs. Carnesi is not 
sure that she likes the change. "Until 
recently," she recalls, "no student 
would even attempt to come in and 
see one of the deans if he wasn't 
properly dressed." She also expresses 
dismay over the language which is 
used by some of today's undergradu¬ 
ates. "But it doesn't bother me," she 
says. "I think I can accept just about 
anything in life. And most of the stu¬ 
dents are still nice kids. If they want 
to wear their hair long, that's their 
business." 

Mrs. Carnesi has warm memories 
of her relationships with the different 
deans, whom she describes as "more 
like friends than like bosses." She is 
reluctant to single out favorites, al¬ 
though she admits to having a special 
warm spot for Dean Coleman, who 
has served the College in one capacity 
or another since she first went to work 
there. Of the six other Deans who 
came and went while she occupied 
the small desk facing the door in 206 
Hamilton, she says, simply, "I was 
crazy about them all." 


37 





BRING US 
TOGETHER 

Barnard and Columbia students 
may soon be able to earn an A.B. 
by satisfying the degree requirements 
of either school. 

This was the startling recom¬ 
mendation of the Joint Committee 
on Cooperation, established last 
spring to see what could be done 
to bring the University's two main 
undergraduate divisions closer to¬ 
gether. Its report, which was issued 
in March, was not a pipe dream of 
young radicals. Committee members, 
all of whom concurred in the pro¬ 
posal, include, among others, Dean 
of the College Carl Hovde, Barnard 
President Martha Peterson, Barnard 
Dean of Faculty Henry Boorse, and 
Barnard English Department chair¬ 
man Barry Ulanov. 

Many Columbia and Barnard 
courses are already open to students 


of either college, but the degree of 
cooperation between Columbia and 
Barnard departments varies widely. 
The Italian departments, for example, 
seem to be practically one, with 
courses decided upon and offered 
jointly. The chemistry departments, 
on the other hand, have had nothing 
to do with one another. Next year, for 
the first time, they will have one cross- 
listed course. 

Although greater cross-listing 
seems desirable, there are serious 
problems even at the present level. 

For the individual Barnard stu¬ 
dent, it can be somewhat of a hassle 
to get permission to attend a Col¬ 
umbia class. She must often prove 
that she needs the course and it 
either is unavailable at Barnard or 
will not fit into her schedule. She 
may have to obtain approving signa¬ 
tures from three or four different 
people. 

Despite the fact that it is not 
always easy to attend a Columbia 
course, far more girls have ventured 


east of Broadway than men have 
moved west. As a result, say some 
University officials, Columbia is pro¬ 
viding a hidden subsidy to Barnard. 
One source estimated this "subsidy” 
at $360,000 for 1968-69. Columbia 
Provost Peter Kenen and Barnard's 
Dean Boorse have been meeting this 
year to try to work out an equitable 
financial arrangement between the 
colleges. 

Although financial differences 
are not yet resolved, in March the 
Joint Committee issued its report, 
strongly urging that "academic re¬ 
sources be pooled to serve the com¬ 
bined but distinctive needs of both 
colleges." 

Far more startling than this care¬ 
fully vague suggestion was the com¬ 
mittee's forthright —and unanimous 
— recommendation that students from 
both colleges be allowed to complete 
the requirements of either Barnard 
or Columbia for the A.B. degree. 

The underlying reasoning appears 
complex. It is obvious that the com- 


MENAGE A TROIS: a scene on the Barnard lawn. Institutional barriers haven't kept 
this threesome apart. 



38 












mittee declined to recommend com¬ 
plete merger of the colleges or their 
departments on the simple ground 
that neither would be accepted. 

Opposition to both would come 
mainly from Barnard, which wishes to 
preserve its own separate endow¬ 
ments and its own corporate identity. 

Most administration and faculty at 
Barnard assert that their school has a 
warmer, more community-like at¬ 
mosphere than Columbia. It is more 
interested in undergraduate teaching, 
more open to experimentation, and 
more truly liberal arts-oriented. One 
Barnard faculty member has said that 
Barnard has "cleaner hands." "We 
have not called in the police, or 
carried on defense-related research," 
she explained. 

Among the Barnard departments 
a great deal of antagonism would 
exist towards any proposed merger. 
Many departments would not want 
to lose control over their curriculurri 
requirements or ability to maintain 
their own subject and content em¬ 
phasis. Individual teachers are likely 
to fear losing positions of authority, 
or not receiving tenure. The argu¬ 
ment seems to be that equality would 
be a myth if departments were 
merged. Barnard would be swallowed 
up, and student options would in 
fact diminish. 

The Joint Committee report seems 
largely designed to alleviate Barnard 
fears. However, many Columbia ad¬ 
ministrators and faculty no doubt 
hope that any plan which serves to 
draw the two schools closer together 
will eventually lead to merger. In ad¬ 
dition to seeing many social and ac¬ 
ademic advantages in such a solution, 
they believe that duality makes for 
large-scale duplication of effort and a 
colossal waste of money. 

Much of the opposition to the 
present proposal comes from Col¬ 
umbia faculty who are reluctant to 
award College A.B.s to students who 
have not satisfied Columbia's general 
education requirements. Some have 
suggested that Columbia students who 
take their core courses at Barnard re¬ 
ceive Barnard degrees, and vice versa. 
Dean Hovde has endorsed this sug¬ 
gestion. 

A longstanding agreement be¬ 
tween Barnard and the University 
prohibits any other division from 


granting the A.B. to women. How¬ 
ever, this agreement was amended 
last year to allow General Studies to 
award the A.B. instead of the B.S. 
The University is expected to ask that 
this restrictive clause be dropped al¬ 
together, and strong opposition from 
Barnard is not foreseen. 

Waiver of the restriction, of 
course, would enable the College to 
admit women on its own. As a sec¬ 
ond and less preferred alternative, the 
Joint Committee suggested thatshould 
its first recommendation be turned 
down, Columbia admit women and 
Barnard admit men. 

The principal obstacles to imple¬ 
mentation of this proposal are the 
absence of facilities in either college 
for expanded enrollment, and reluct¬ 
ance at both schools to decrease the 
numbers of the sex already there. If 
Columbia were to reduce its male 
population, one result would be the 
acceptance of fewer athletes. Already 
Columbia is the second-smallest 
school in the Ivy League, a handi¬ 
cap which is reflected annually in the 
football standings. Administrators con¬ 
cede privately that any drop in male 
admissions would force the College 
to abandon football — and, possibly, 
abandon as well some sizeable con¬ 
tributions from football fans among 
the alumni. 

Oddly, one effect of the second 
proposal may be to improve the 
chances of the first. Some Columbia 
faculty predict that admission of 
women to Columbia would mean 
the death of Barnard, because Bar¬ 
nard would finish a dismal second 
in the competition for high-quality 
applicants. By raising this specter, 
the report may cause Barnard of¬ 
ficials to receive more favorably the 
less drastic alternative. 

The implementation of either 
proposal would require the approval 
of the faculties, committees on in¬ 
struction, and administrations of both 
Colleges, as well as the central ad¬ 
ministration of the University. These 
bodies are not known for acting 
speedily. Nevertheless, Dean Hovde 
has said that he would be deeply 
disappointed if "some part of the 
proposal" were not in effect by next 
year. He is convinced that unless co¬ 
education comes soon — in one form 
or another—the two colleges will no 


longer be able to attract outstanding 
students. 

Certainly, the report has gen¬ 
erated plenty of discussion. 

Barnard religion department 
chairman Theodor Gaster firmly op¬ 
poses any plan which would per¬ 
mit Barnard undergraduates to earn 
their degree by satisfying Columbia 
requirements. Barnard's required 
courses, he believes, are more rig¬ 
orous than "Columbia's general edu¬ 
cation smorgasbord." 

The chairman of Columbia's re¬ 
ligion department, James Martin, also 
has reservations. He feels that "there 
are values in Columbia's general edu¬ 
cation program, and not requiring 
Columbia students to take these 
courses merits serious thought." 

Both Barnard chemistry chairman 
Edward King and Columbia chem 
chairman Benjamin Dailey stress that 
there are basic differences between 
the two departments which make co¬ 
operation difficult. "We're more re¬ 
search-oriented here," explains Dailey. 
"At Barnard they supposedly spend 
more time with their undergraduates. 
Naturally, I think we offer more excit¬ 
ing teaching, and that the departments 
should merge and do the whole job 
by our philosophy. Given the current 
state of affairs, it might be better for 
us each just to admit the opposite 
sex." 

Some doubts center upon the rel¬ 
ative academic merits of the two in¬ 
stitutions. Columbia professors do not 
dispute that Barnard undergraduates 
are as good as their male counter¬ 
parts, but many are less sanguine 
about the Barnard faculty. 

There are Barnard undergrad¬ 
uates, who, like some of their de¬ 
partment heads, would prefer to see 
Barnard remain the Castle Adamant 
and concentrate, as one girl put it, 
on being "supportive to women." 
But many students at both schools 
agree that joint instruction is ulti¬ 
mately desirable. To keep the faculty 
from bickering too long on how this 
is to be accomplished, a group of 
them has formed the "Coeducation 
Coalition" to prod their pedagogues 
into action. "Disruptive action" has 
been threatened if the Joint Com¬ 
mittee's proposals are not accepted 
in some form fairly soon by the re¬ 
spective committees on instruction. 


39 





BONNIE FREER 




(Above) A lounge In Hartley ... 

(L.).. . and another in John Jay. 

JOINT EFFORT: This epic adorns 
the wall of a Hartley lounge. A different 
student wrote each line. 

OtO A<#£ 

1 % C0kH*s»4«<* 

<we. was fucked by tb* osmy 


tb« dead^bcin^ non-briny 

Vlilb V»er boozy blwos. 



40 













ANTERIOR DECORATION: Brightening up a room in Hartley. 


THE 

ARRANGEMENT 

A plan to establish co-educational 
dormitories has been shelved for at 
least another semester, according to 
Assistant Dean for Residence Owen 
Isaacs. Dean Isaacs still believes that 
co-educational living can begin by the 
spring semester of 1971. 

Implementation of the proposal 
was stalled by administrative snarls 
which, it is hoped, can be worked out 
during the coming term. The College 
found that it couldn't obtain single 
rooms for Barnard women without dis¬ 
placing upperclassmen already there. 
The only available space was in Car¬ 
man, which is usually set aside for 
freshmen. Carman, though, consists 
entirely of doubles, and is therefore 
unattractive to Barnard juniors and 
seniors, who normally have private 


rooms. Barnard, by the same token, 
could only offer accommodations in 
Reid Hall. Reid, which also contains 
mostly doubles, presently houses 
freshmen. The freshmen, however, 
would have to be moved elsewhere, 
because they would not be permitted 
to live in co-educational dormitories. 
Once again, Barnard girls who wanted 
integrated quarters would have to give 
up their single rooms, which they are 
generally unwilling to do. Only 14 
women applied to live in mixed dor¬ 
mitories. 

In addition, Columbia men who 
move to Reid Hall would have to pur¬ 
chase the Barnard meal plan. In spite 
of this deterrent, the boys were ready 
and willing. Approximately 25 volun¬ 
teered to make the transfer, which 
Dean Isaacs described as "a consider¬ 
able number." 

Earlier in the semester, about 150 
College undergraduates obeyed an 


Undergraduate Dormitory Council in¬ 
junction to "sleep openly and mili- 
tantly" in the lounge of Brooks Hall, 
another Barnard dormitory, in order to 
dramatize their demands for co-edu¬ 
cational living arrangements. 

Women have enjoyed unrestric¬ 
ted visiting privileges since November, 
1968, when Dean of the College Carl 
F. Hovde vested the U.D.C. with the 
power to set parietals, and the Council 
responded by abolishing parietals al¬ 
together. (The only remaining regula¬ 
tions are that women visitors must 
be escorted except in the first-floor 
lobbies, and extended stays are not 
permitted.) The result, argue Council 
officers, has been to make Columbia 
more honest than other Ivy institu¬ 
tions, which establish parietals but 
don't enforce them. To appreciate 
how quickly and completely times 
have changed, one need only realize 
that eight years ago women were not 


41 













TOGETHERNESS: Furnald resident and friend. 


permitted above the first floors of the 
dormitories under any circumstances 
whatsoever. 

Other innovations are equally 
startling — and equally important to 
the University's campaign to create a 
pleasant, home-like atmosphere in the 
dorms. Many of the rooms have 
been converted into singles, except in 
Carman, and a room on each floor has 
been set aside as a public lounge. 
Naturally, this has cost money. The 
price for the new singles is not high 
enough to absorb the loss in revenues 
from the doubles, while the lounges 
were fashioned out of what were for¬ 
merly rent-producing units. The trus¬ 
tees appropriated $287,000 to finance 
the change. During the coming aca¬ 
demic year, moreover, Centrex tele¬ 
phones will be installed in every room, 
eliminating the switchboard snags 
which have plagued callers for dec¬ 
ades. 


The atmosphere, not surprisingly, 
seems more relaxed than in past years. 
Artwork and graffiti, sometimes quite 
imaginative, abound along the walls 
of the rooms and lounges. Lavatory ar¬ 
rangements for the visitors, a delicate 
issue given the absence of private fa¬ 
cilities, are dealt with by the simple 
device of posting a makeshift sign. 
(Male residents reportedly have been 
balked for long periods in their at¬ 
tempts to use the bathroom when the 
girl or her escort neglected to remove 
the sign after her departure.) 

But all is not roses. Security has 
become an important issue: last win¬ 
ter, the Columbian ran a feature about 
the dormitories entitled "You're Safer 
In Jail." Theft is a problem—as it is on 
all metropolitan campuses—and there 
have even been a few muggings. Last 
winter, an identification card system 
was instituted, for the purpose of ex¬ 
cluding non-students from the build¬ 


ings. This irritated many blacks and a 
few white radicals, who argued that 
members of ethnic minorities were the 
only people actually checked. Officials 
report, however, that their efforts to 
explain the new system were generally 
successful, and that the policy—which 
remains in effect only in Carman—has 
been increasingly well-received. The 
University is painfully conscious of the 
need to provide security for dorm 
residents, and plans are afoot to estab¬ 
lish broader and more effective safe¬ 
guards next year. 

The dormitories, in short, have 
not only taken on the attributes but 
have fallen prey to some of the dan¬ 
gers of apartment living in New York 
City. It is the University's dual task to 
preserve the former while minimizing 
the latter. Administrators are address¬ 
ing themselves conscientiously to 
both. 


42 







NUCLEAR HOT 
POTATO 

A decade ago, Columbia decided 
to build a small nuclear reactor on 
campus, to produce neutrons for 
teaching and research purposes. Now 
completed, the TRIGA Mark II reactor 
has yet to produce anything but con¬ 
troversy. Inanimate, it lies within the 
eight-foot-thick walls of its concrete 
lair in the Engineering Building. To its 
proponents, it represents a Prome¬ 
thean gift to mankind; to its op¬ 
ponents, it is a Frankenstein monster 
which must never be given life. 

Before this fall, the reactor was 
practically a fait accompli. When Col¬ 
umbia was granted a license for con¬ 
struction by the Atomic Energy Com¬ 
mission (AEC) in 1963, there was little 
public opposition. TRIGA was finished 
in 1967, and early in 1968 Columbia 
applied to the AEC for a permit to 
activate it. There was little doubt that 
the application would be approved: 
besides giving the go-ahead for con¬ 
struction, the AEC had contributed 
one-fifth of the necessary funds. 

Then came the 1968 spring up¬ 
heaval, and the University deemed it 
prudent to defer consideration of the 
matter. Required open hearings were 
postponed by the AEC licensing 
board, at Columbia's request. Mean¬ 
while, rumbles of displeasure with the 
reactor had intensified. When the 
hearings were finally held last Novem¬ 
ber, spokesmen for several community 
groups, including a tenants associa¬ 
tion and a local political club, ap¬ 
peared to testify against TRIGA. The 
lines of battle were drawn. 

To activate or not to activate? It is 
nominally a question of safety, al¬ 
though considerations such as com¬ 
munity relations may be deciding fac¬ 
tors. 

A reactor is designed to step up 
and control the splitting, or fission, of 
uranium atoms. This allows the neu¬ 
trons locked inside to escape, produc¬ 
ing energy in the form of heat, radia¬ 
tion, and light. Columbia's reactor was 
built for use as a laboratory tool by 
faculty and students in the Division of 
Nuclear Science and Engineering. 

Defenders of the reactor are quick 
to dispel the visions of mushroom¬ 
shaped clouds which are conjured up 


by the terms "atomic" and "nuclear." 
The fuel to be used contains only a 
tenth of the uranium necessary for a 
nuclear explosion. It would be impos¬ 
sible for the fission reaction within the 
reactor to exceed even the level of 
activity which the AEC is considering, 
because the fuel will stop working 
when it reaches a certain temperature, 
providing a foolproof method of regu¬ 
lation. The defenders also cite proudly 
the accident-free record of the nearly 
40 TRIGA reactors already in opera¬ 
tion and point out that Columbia's 
TRIGA will produce very low levels of 
heat and radiation, since it is 10,000 
times smaller than a power-generating 
reactor. 

The reactor's most persistent 
critics, aware of these facts, counter 
with two principal arguments. Some 
are disturbed because TRiGA will oc¬ 
casionally release small amounts of a 
short-lived radioactive gas (argon-41, 
which decays almost totally within 12 
hours) through a stack into the air out¬ 
side the reactor enclosure. "Non¬ 
sense," snort the nuclear physicists 
and engineers. Because of low-level 
background radiation which occurs 
naturally in the environment, those 
living closest to the reactor would re¬ 
ceive just as much radiation from 
standing in a room with five other 
people as from the argon-41. 

The second argument is that the 
highly radioactive wastes which are a 
by-product of fission threaten the sur¬ 
rounding community. These gaseous 
and solid wastes are formed and ac¬ 
cumulate in the 70 uranium "ele¬ 
ments" which fuel the reactor. They 
emit radiation and are potentially 
lethal. However, each fuel element is 
sealed within a separate stainless steel 
container and submerged in 18 feet of 
water. This water, which is constantly 
being purified, and the concrete walls 
surrounding the reactor core, absorb 
virtually all the radiation. If a leak 
developed in a stainless steel con¬ 
tainer, a small amount of escaping 
radioactive gas would bubble up 
through the water and release its 
radiation directly into the air within 
the reactor enclosure. But the situa¬ 
tion would quickly be defected and 
corrected. 

But what if something cata¬ 
strophic happened, like an airplane 
crashing onto the top of the building, 


ask the anti-reactor forces. 

The underground reactor, with its 
thick protective walls, is constructed 
to withstand a San Francisco earth¬ 
quake, the nuclear engineers reassure 
them. 

Well, what if a saboteur planted 
a bomb, query the skeptics. 

Convinced of the improbability 
that such an attempt would succeed, 
the engineers cautiously concede that 
a bombing is hypothetically possible. 
The worst damage they can imagine is 
for all 70 stainless steel containers to 
be broken open and all the water 
drained out of the reactor. This would 
result in a maximum exposure to the 
thyroid of the people nearest the 
building about equal to the exposure 
from yearly background radiation, 
with a good deal less to the body as a 
whole. This is much less than the ex¬ 
posure one receives from a single 
x-ray. The release of the radioactivity 
retained in the uranium fuel elements 
— which would be quite disastrous — 
would require that the metal elements 
be heated to several thousand degrees 
Fahrenheit, far hotter than the tem¬ 
perature produced in any combustion 
process. 

Still, the hardiest foes remain un¬ 
swayed. The actual size of community 
opposition is hard to gauge. But this is 
not a numbers game, and the cries of 
"remember the Morningside gym" 
voiced by some anti-reactor demon¬ 
strators have surely sent shivers up the 
spines of administrators anxious to 
avoid a replay of 1968. 

Mistrust of Columbia plays a cer¬ 
tain part in the hostility toward TRIGA. 
"We have been too mistreated to be¬ 
lieve what Columbia says," charges 
one community woman, who along 
with many others has been alienated 
by the University's land grab on the 
Heights. But a University Senate com¬ 
mittee has put its finger on the real 
nub of the controversy. In its scientific 
fact-finding report on the reactor, the 
committee states that "in analyzing 
the hazards that the reactor may pre¬ 
sent, one is dealing with very small 
and, largely because they are so small, 
essentially unknown probabilities for 
adverse effects." 

One of these problematic prob¬ 
abilities concerns the long-range 
effects of very low-level radiation. 
Since there is no conclusive proof to 


43 








BABY TRIGA: a small-scale model, not the real McCoy. 



establish whether or not such radia¬ 
tion causes biological damage, the 
Federal Radiation Council has stated 
that any level of radiation should be 
considered harmful, and should be 
minimized as much as possible. Rea¬ 
son TRIGA's opponents: "Why should 
we take ank risk whatsoever just so 
Columbia can have a reactor in its 
backyard, especially if no one can tell 
us exactly what that risk is?" They are 
bolstered in their resistance by two 
scientists, Dr. William Nicholson and 
Dr. Sidney Socolar, who have scored 
Columbia's nuclear engineers for their 
"casual approach." The engineers, say 
these scientists, view the amounts of 
radiation under discussion as so mi¬ 
nuscule that they may fail to guard 
against any unnecessary release to the 
community. 

The Columbia engineers see their 
opponents as emotional paranoids, 


flim-flammed by groundless fears. The 
anti-reactor crusaders accuse the en¬ 
gineers of being insensitive, inhumane 
technocrats, concerned only with pro¬ 
tecting their own investment and pro¬ 
fessional interests. 

Columbia has tried to persuade 
its enemies that there will be benefits 
to the comrnunity from the reactor, 
which should be weighed against the 
risks. A doctor at neighboring St. 
Luke's Hospital, for instance, has ex¬ 
pressed keen interest in using isotopes 
from the reactor for the 250 bone 
scans he makes each year to detect 
bone cancer. Because these isotopes 
would decay so quickly, stronger 
initial doses could be used, resulting 
in less intense radiation exposure. 

Columbia also argues that the re¬ 
actor would benefit society as a 
whole. Dr. William Havens, chairman 
of the Nuclear Engineering Division, 


has said that he would rather have a 
TRIGA reactor heating his home than 
an oil-burning furnace, partly because 
of the pollutants created by burning 
fossil fuel. The use of nuclear energy 
to produce power would help clean 
up the atmosphere. Besides, argue the 
engineers, developing power reactors 
is an urgent need, pollution or no pol¬ 
lution. Our electricity requirements 
double every 10 years. We are deplet¬ 
ing the world's reserves of oil and coal 
so quickly that there may be none left 
within 100 years. Thus, they conclude, 
nuclear energy will be a necessary as 
well as a desirable source of elec¬ 
tricity. Columbia, with the help of the 
reactor, should take the lead in train¬ 
ing people to meet the challenge. 

"Training nuclear engineers is not 
Columbia's manifest destiny—let 
other schools do it, "argue some. The 
other schools may have to. If the re- 


44 








































BONNIE FREER 






READY ON THE TRIGA: a glimpse 
of the controversial reactor. 


' muter 


•s&jsHstsr. 


!^>? a *-£»^t!n4at T5 sT ! 


MUSHROOMING OPPOSITION: Humorists among 
reactor personnel taped this trophy to the 
walls of their control room. 


actor is not activated, it will mean the 
end of the nuclear engineering pro¬ 
gram at Columbia, predicts Prof. 
Charles Bonilla, of the Engineering 
School. 

Others question whether any 
schools should be involved in advanc¬ 
ing nuclear fission technology. Like 
Dr. Socolar, who is a research asso¬ 
ciate in physiology at Columbia, they 
see the Columbia reactor not so much 
as a menace in itself, but as part of a 
growing and threatening network. 
"Nuclear fission power," Dr. Socolar 
has stated, "is no more the answer to 
our electrical power needs than is 
fossil fuel." He points out that radia¬ 
tion wastes must be dumped some¬ 
where and that as they increase, they 
will become a serious source of radia¬ 
tion pollution—particularly since some 
of them do not decay for a millenium. 
He suggests that we should question 


our electricity "needs," as well as how 
to provide for them. 

His attitude reflects a swelling 
nationwide skepticism about the use 
of the atom for peaceful purposes. 
This is coupled with a loss of con¬ 
fidence in the independent AEC as a 
regulatory agency, especially since it 
is also responsible for encouraging 
peaceful uses of nuclear power. Even 
though the nuclear reactors licensed 
and inspected by the AEC have a re¬ 
markable safety record, accidents and 
near-misses have occurred, not only in 
the reactors themselves, but also in 
the transport of radioactive wastes. 
People have the feeling that some¬ 
thing disastrous is bound to happen 
sooner or later, and the fact that the 
self-regulating AEC is both watchdog 
and promoter is not comforting. 

The AEC is feeling its share of dis¬ 
comfort. Its decision on Columbia's 


reactor was expected in late February. 
But opposition has set off a chain re¬ 
action which has turned decision¬ 
making into a waiting game. In direct 
response to the agitation over the 
Columbia reactor, legislation has been 
introduced in the New York City 
Council which would ban nuclear de¬ 
vices from the city. Similar legislation 
is awaiting a vote in the State legisla¬ 
ture. The Columbia University Senate 
has also decided to pass on whether 
the reactor should be activated, fol¬ 
lowing the recommendation of an in¬ 
vestigating committee. Faced with this 
triple threat, the AEC licensing board 
has postponed its own judgment, and 
has requested further information 
from all parties involved in the con¬ 
troversy. 


45 


BONNIE FREER 
















For 50 years, Columbia freshmen have shared 
a common educational experience, not only with 
their own classmates, but with every student who 
has entered the College since the fall of 1919. 

This experience, through which the freshman is 
introduced to the social sciences and Western lit¬ 
erature, has consisted of two key courses: Contem¬ 
porary Civilization and, more recently, Humanities. 
Unlike the older required freshman English course, 
which has often been attacked and revised, CC and 
Humanities have enjoyed almost unbroken success 
throughout most of their history. They are as integral 
to the College tradition as the Van Am Quad, the 
Sundial, and the West End, and have been emulated 
in hundreds of universities across the country. 

CC UNDER SIEGE 

by the editors 

Now, however, an important College committee 
has recommended that the common experience be 
abandoned. The Committee on Educational Policy, 
chaired by Professor of Russian Robert Belknap, has 
proposed a series of options to replace the estab¬ 
lished first-year requirements. CC and Humanities 
would continue to be offered, at least for the pres¬ 
ent. So would a freshman English course, although it 
would vary greatly in content from English A. But 
incoming freshmen would choose one of three pro¬ 
grams: a traditional CC-Humanities-English package; 
a ten-point seminar, conducted by two teachers, in 
lieu of all three; or a six-point seminar in either CC 
or Humanities and a regular four-credit course in 
the other. Students electing this third option would 
not take a separate writing course. Presumably, the 
seminar would provide the necessary training in 
composition. 

The controversial ten-point seminar, authored by 
Professor of English Quentin Anderson, a committee 
member, would be taught in several sections, in 
which the entire semester would be devoted to the 
intensive scrutiny of a few materials. Each section 
would study different texts. 


46 




The College faculty has already discussed the 
Committee's proposals, which deal not only with the 
freshman year but with the entire curriculum, at two 
meetings in May, and will vote upon them early in 
the fall. 

The end of the common experience may mean 
the end of CC as well. Although this is not the com¬ 
mittee's objective, some members predict—without 
visible anguish—that CC (and perhaps Humanities 
also) will succumb in a Darwinian process of natural 
selection. 

The "shared experience" has served three prin¬ 
cipal purposes: to unite the freshman class (in days 
when Columbia was largely a commuters' school), 
to provide a common basis for discussion in upper 
college courses, and to instill a minimum body of 
essential knowledge, both of content and method. 
The latter is associated with the concept of the well- 
rounded gentleman-amateur or "whole man"—a 
term which has disappeared from the College cata¬ 
log and indeed from the vocabularies of most Col¬ 
umbia undergraduates. Students and teachers now 
question whether the core courses still serve those 
purposes, or whether the purposes themselves are 
valid. 

It is true that today's students seek community 
with their fellows more self-consciously than any of 
their predecessors. They find it, however, not in 
identification with their College class, or with any 
academic unit, but in small, informal groups which 
are often unconnected with the University. As for 
meaningful discussion—as distinguished from mere 
exchange of banalities—many believe that it occurs 
more readily in or out of the classroom among under¬ 
graduates with different backgrounds. Finally, the 
"whole man" has perished because today's highly 
specialized faculty scorns to teach dilettantes, while 
students reject the elitism implicit in the schooling 
of the gentleman-amateur. Moreover, it is hard for 
teachers to develop a curriculum based on a body 
of essential knowledge when—especially in the social 
sciences—they cannot agree among themselves on 
what is essential or even what is known. 

There are additional reasons why many com¬ 


mittee members believe that the common experi¬ 
ence should be abolished. One is the prevailing dis¬ 
enchantment of undergraduates with requirements 
in any form. According to Prof. Belknap, this dis¬ 
enchantment exists even when students are satis¬ 
fied with the subject-matter and teaching of the 
required courses. 

In 1951, Professor of Philosophy Justus Buchler 
wrote that the general education program was a 
logical outgrowth of what he called the "division of 
aim between the Upper and Lower College." In the 
last two years, he explained, the student is respon¬ 
sible for planning his own program; in the first two 
years, the College is responsible for giving him the 
necessary equipment to plan intelligently. Thus the 
faculty "asked the student first to share its experi¬ 
ence of what is best, then to apply this experience 
as his own judgment dictated." 

For better or worse, freshmen will no longer 
swallow such paternalism. Many believe that faculty 
judgments are based on values and premises which 
they reject. Therefore faculty experience of "what is 
best" counts for little. (Besides, the subject matter of 
the core courses is determined by their respective 
staffs. The CC and English A staffs are dominated by 
graduate students, so that even the more passive and 
conservative students are unlikely to find the "ex¬ 
perience" argument compelling.) 

Younger teachers who have close contacts with 
undergraduates link resentment of requirements to 
a more general resentment against having to attend 
college at all, and tie this in turn to resentment 
towards the society of which the University is a part. 
Nor can one argue in rebuttal that those who don't 
want to go to college can simply stay away. The 
pressures are real. 

There is, to begin with, the overarching presence 
of the draft. The chances are that few come here 
solely to avoid military service—no more, probably, 
than come because they really want to learn. But, 
although no figures are available, it is likely that 
many stay because of the draft who otherwise would 
(and possibly should) drop out or take leaves of 
absence. 


47 






Freshman takes notes in CC class. Course Guide suggests 
that students prefer discussion to lectures. 


Others enroll in mindless obe¬ 
dience to the expectations of career- 
minded parents and high school 
teachers. To be sure, this has always 
been so. But in the past, students who 
went to Columbia to prepare for 
careers were not beginning simulta¬ 
neously to question the ethic of the 
society in which they would make 
their way. 

What is most important, how¬ 
ever, is not whether students are 
really forced to be here, but that they 
believe they are forced to be here. For 
such students, requirements are salt 
in the wound. Similarly, it is not 
necessary to decide whether the 
faculty is qualified to prescribe 
courses for freshmen. It is enough to 
recognize that undergraduates today 
are more assertive, more rebellious, 
more individualistic, more skeptical 
of authority than ever before. In 
planning a curriculum, the faculty 
cannot ignore this reality, just as it 
cannot ignore the realities of budge¬ 
tary restrictions. The temper of the 
student body is a fact which will 
not be wished away. 

What the students want is flex¬ 
ibility, and the committee is in¬ 
clined to give it to them. Prof. Belk¬ 
nap, no radical, is nevertheless anx¬ 
ious to open up at least a limited 
number of options. (“Lord knows on 
what basis they'd choose," he con¬ 
cedes candidly, “but at least they'd 
have the illusion of choice, and I'm 
willing to settle for that.") Other 
committee members concur, albeit 
for widely differing reasons. Assistant 
Professor of Biological Sciences Eric 
Holtzman '59 points out that in¬ 
coming students are exposed to “a 
wider range of life-styles" than in 
the past. “The sooner they learn how 
to choose critically," he argues, "the 
better off they'll be." The Upper Col¬ 
lege would profit also, he anticipates, 
because juniors and seniors will plan 
majors more intelligently if they have 
learned to make decisions early in 
their academic careers. Assistant Pro¬ 
fessor of Greek and Latin Seth Schein 
'63 questions whether the faculty can 
legitimately tell undergraduates what 
to study. Prof. Schein maintains that 
incoming students are capable of 
charting their own programs. Assist¬ 
ant Professor Elizabeth Hansot of the 
Political Science department is less 
sanguine about the capabilities of 
freshmen. However, she too is willing 
to give them the flexibility they seem 
to want, although she is disturbed by 
the prospect that some will choose 
unwisely. "If they insist upon being 


treated as adults," she argues, "they 
must learn to live with the conse¬ 
quences. That's part of growing up." 

A few even suggest that a flex¬ 
ible program might be the best solu¬ 
tion to irreconcilable differences 
within the committee. "We'll take 
the pet projects of the three or four 
most articulate people," predicted 
one member early in the delibera¬ 
tions. "Then we'll let the kids decide 
because we can't." 

It is hoped that faculty as well 
as students will respond favorably to 
a series of new courses. CC, English 
A, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, 
Humanities all suffer from a dearth 
of senior staff. This is due to a variety 
of circumstances, many of which the 
College, acting alone, can do little 
to alter. But several full professors 
have suggested that one reason why 
tenured faculty shun the program is 
because it has been around for too 
many years to generate excitement. 

Moreover, the subject-matter of 
CC and Humanities is usually far re¬ 
moved from the research interests 
of tenured professors, who are more 
highly specialized than their prede¬ 
cessors of a generation earlier. By 
abandoning the present monolithic 
requirements structure and substitut¬ 
ing a variety of alternatives, the Com¬ 
mittee hopes to entice senior men 


with twin lures of novelty and lati¬ 
tude to teach what they enjoy. 

The Belknap Committee is by 
no means the first to scrutinize the 
curriculum. Since World War II 
alone, four other College commit¬ 
tees—headed respectively by H. R. 
Steeves, David Truman, Fritz Stern 
and Thomas Colahan—have under¬ 
taken more or less leisurely surveys 
of general education or the entire 
undergraduate program. And this fig¬ 
ure does not take into account the 
monumental study by Professor of 
Sociology Daniel Bell, published in 
1966 as The Reforming of General 
Education. 

What distinguishes the present 
committee from the earlier ones is 
the prevalence of a sense of urgency 
and crisis, not only among committee 
members but in other quarters as 
well. Some believe that the College 
is changing too swiftly in response 
to the transient whims of student 
pressure groups. Others fear that it 
isn't changing swiftly enough. A 
frightening number agree that the 
school is gripped by a deadly malaise, 
infecting students and faculty alike. 
They conclude that something must 
be done to renew commitment and 
excitement at all levels of the Col¬ 
lege community if the institution is 
to survive. 


48 





History professor David Rothman observes 
longer interested in "the broad sweep." 


Of the two major freshman 
courses, CC has always been plagued 
by more problems than Humanities. 
A recurring one has been the reading 
list, which has been revised many 
times since 1919, most recently in 
1968. The current list continues to 
arouse controversy among those 
teaching the course, while student 
reaction, to judge from the 1969 
Course Evaluation booklet, is "not 
especially enthusiastic." The Human¬ 
ities materials, in contrast, tend to be 
self-selecting and, to some extent, 
self-teaching. Scholars have little dif¬ 
ficulty agreeing upon the great works 
of the past. "Every year we start from 
scratch," commented one Human¬ 
ities veteran, "and we always come 
up with the same readings." Sur¬ 
prisingly, freshmen appear satisfied 
with the faculty's choices. Last year's 
Course Evaluation guide, published 
by students in the Ted Kremer So¬ 
ciety, reports: "Even in the most 
poorly taught sections—and there are 
few of these—the reading makes the 
offering worthwhile, if not exciting." 
Explained CC instructor Martin Baron, 
resignedly: "Everyone loves a good 
story." 

Humanities also appears to be 
more successful in recruiting teach¬ 
ers, especially among young assistant 
professors who will shortly be con¬ 


that even historians are no 


sidered for tenure. While CC is 
manned almost exclusively by instruc¬ 
tors and preceptors, who are graduate 
students teaching part-time while 
working toward their doctorate, 
slightly more than half the Human¬ 
ities staff hold the rank of assistant 
professor or higher. Most of the 
others are associates, lecturers, or 
instructors. Of the 39 men and 
women who taught Humanities this 
spring, only three were preceptors. 

Former Humanities chairman 
Donald Frame, who sits on the Belk¬ 
nap Committee, suggests that this is 
partly because Humanities draws 
most of its teachers from the English 
and foreign language departments. 
For the younger full-time faculty in 
these departments, Humanities is 
often a refuge from dreary introduc¬ 
tory language or English composition 
courses. Humanities, moreover, is 
probably less difficult to teach than 
CC. Dean of the College Carl F. 
Hovde '50, who has taught Human¬ 
ities himself, describes it as "gruel¬ 
ling," but concedes that CC makes 
even greater demands on the instruc¬ 
tor. "Humanities isn't really as inter¬ 
disciplinary as CC," explains com¬ 
mittee member James Fessenden '66, 
a Humanities preceptor from the 
philosophy department. "You're deal¬ 
ing with works of literature which in¬ 


volve techniques common to all lit¬ 
erary disciplines." The CC teacher, on 
the other hand, must acquire an im¬ 
pressive body of knowledge in sev¬ 
eral disciplines besides his own. For 
an assistant professor who is strug¬ 
gling to publish in order to obtain 
tenure, this is a powerful deterrent. 

CC has stood up to scrutiny in 
the past. The Steeves Committee in 
1946 praised it as "the highly respec¬ 
ted grandparent of all the 'orientation' 
courses." The Truman Committee rec¬ 
ommended no substantial changes. 
Only toward the close of the 'sixties 
did Daniel Bell and, later, the Cola- 
han Committee call for major revi¬ 
sions in format and content. 

Yet the problems of CC are not 
new. Ten years ago, the Truman 
Committee warned that the program 
suffered from an excessive turnover 
rate, a preponderance of junior fac¬ 
ulty, and a workload which placed 
impossible burdens upon the staff. 
Nevertheless, the committee noted 
that "a number of philosophers, po¬ 
litical theorists, and historians, even 
an economist or two, are committed 
to its continuation, and most faculty 
in all fields are convinced of its value." 
The question naturally arises why a 
course which was hailed ten years 
ago should be fighting for its life to¬ 
day. 

The tendency among College fac¬ 
ulty is to place much of the blame on 
rapid turnover. The villain of the piece 
is thought to be the preceptor, the 
Ph.D. candidate who teaches part 
time in the College. He seems a natu¬ 
ral for the part. He is young, he lacks 
experience, he does not remain at 
Columbia long enough to acquire a 
stake in the program or the institution. 
Moreover, he is a creation of the cost- 
efficiency experts—"a triumph of fiscal 
rationalization," as one scholar has 
called him elsewhere in this issue— 
and as such he appears to personify 
the subordination of academic values 
to the imperatives of the budget. 

Not long ago, a doctoral stu¬ 
dent might teach full time with the 
rank of instructor while writing his 
dissertation at leisure. The only re¬ 
striction was imposed by the Uni¬ 
versity-wide "up or out" rule, which 
required full-time faculty to obtain 
tenure within eight years or go else¬ 
where. Since tenure is rarely granted 
to people without doctorates, eight 
years was the maximum time which 
a teacher could remain on the fac¬ 
ulty without obtaining a Ph.D. To¬ 
day, however, the University — in its 
understandable eagerness to allocate 


49 






limited resources among as many de¬ 
serving students as possible—usually 
places a seven-year ceiling on dis¬ 
sertations. Such a deadline is often 
incompatible with full-time teaching. 
Hence, the preceptor. 

Almost by definition, the pre¬ 
ceptor is not only a part-time em¬ 
ployee but a short-term one, since 
he is not supposed to receive his 
appointment until he has passed his 
comprehensive examinations—a proc¬ 
ess which consumes at least two or 
three of his allotted seven years. 
Another recent development threat¬ 
ens to shorten his tenure still further. 
To help ease the burden on the grad¬ 
uate faculties of the nation's univer¬ 
sities, the government has instituted 
a "faculty fellows" program. Under 
this program, the government sup¬ 
ports the student during three years 
of graduate study and the school 
picks up the tab for a fourth year. 
Naturally it is economical for the 
graduate school to obtain a precep- 
torship for its fourth-year faculty fel¬ 
lows. In that manner it fulfills its ob¬ 
ligation without drawing upon its 
precious scholarship funds, which 
can then be made available to stu¬ 
dents who do not enjoy government 
grants. As a result, chairmen of gen¬ 
eral education programs can expect 
to face mounting pressure to ap¬ 
point preceptors for only a single 
year. This pressure will fall most 
heavily on CC, which has not been 
able to attract full-time faculty, and 
must depend for staffing upon which¬ 
ever preceptors the departments 
choose to make available. The de¬ 
partments are usually controlled by 
senior professors who teach entirely 
or primarily in the Graduate School. 
The College—and in particular the first 
year program—are commonly be¬ 
lieved to receive short shrift. 

In large measure, the staffing 
problem which afflicts CC prevails 
throughout the College. It is espe¬ 
cially acute, however, in the social 
sciences, where the cleavage be¬ 
tween graduate and undergraduate 
teaching is greatest. And of all the 
social science offerings, CC is hard¬ 
est hit: because it makes the great¬ 
est demands on the instructor; be¬ 
cause its students are the youngest 
and least knowledgeable; because 
the non-specialized, interdisciplinary 
character of its subject-matter is fur¬ 
thest removed from the mainstream 
of contemporary scholarship. 

The genesis of the problem lies 
in a split between the College and 
the Graduate School, professionally, 


ideologically, and even physically—as 
is manifested in the fact that profes¬ 
sors who do most of their teaching 
in the College often have offices in 
Hamilton Hall, while their Graduate 
School colleagues are assigned offices 
elsewhere. 

The basic academic unit of the 
University is the department. It is the 
department which does the hiring, 
not the College, not the Graduate 
Faculties, not the School of General 
Studies. It is the department which 
decides who shall receive raises, who 
shall be recommended for promo¬ 
tion, who shall be proposed for ten¬ 
ure. And it is the department, rather 
than the schools, which determine 
teaching assignments. 

There is no such thing, de jure , 
as "College departments," which 
may be just as well, since many 
scholars believe that such depart¬ 
ments would attract mostly second- 
raters who could not make it into 
the graduate schools. But the hier¬ 
archical structure of the University 
departments has often resulted in the 
creation of College departments de 
facto. 

The senior members of a de¬ 
partment-tenured professors and as¬ 
sociate professors—have wide latitude 
in selecting not only the courses 
they teach but the divisions of the 
University in which they serve. "You 
don't assign a professor," observes 
one administrator. Many choose to 
teach only graduate courses. They 
do so for a variety of reasons: be¬ 
cause such courses more nearly par¬ 
allel their research interests; be¬ 
cause graduate school teaching is 
thought to be more prestigious; be¬ 
cause—in a few cases—their seminars 
are so tiny that for practical purposes 
they do no teaching at all. 

But the principal reason why 
senior men shun the College is the 
growing specialization of academic 
disciplines, in consequence of which 
the specialists feel themselves unable 
as well as reluctant to impart their 
professional knowledge to laymen. 
Nowhere is specialization greater— 
or the cleavage between graduate 
and undergraduate teaching more 
pronounced—than in the social sci¬ 
ences. 

The gulf is not so wide in the 
humanities. There, academic degrees 
often reflect highly artificial distinc¬ 
tions: the subject-matter is an art 
form, and creative students can be 
found at any level of instruction. Nor 
does it exist among the natural sci¬ 
ences, a fact which surprises many 


laymen, since the sciences are so 
specialized themselves. But, as As¬ 
sociate Professor of Physics Richard 
Friedberg explains, scientists are still 
caught up in the 17th-century tradi¬ 
tion which holds thatscientific knowl¬ 
edge is accessible to everyone, and 
is not a priestly monopoly. In some 
fields, the most important scientific 
work revolves around the re-exami¬ 
nation and criticism of fundamentals, 
rather than the elaboration of eso¬ 
teric points, so that distinguished 
physicists can profit professionally 
from explaining themselves to non¬ 
scientists in the most basic language. 
There is additional reason to teach 
undergraduate science majors: as 
Friedberg, a Belknap Committee 
member, points out, students "latch 
on" to science at a relatively early age. 
Consequently the major programs are 
more professionalized, and distinc¬ 
tions between graduate and under¬ 
graduate study less meaningful, than 
in other disciplines. Finally, each of 
the sciences possesses what Prof. 
Holtzman calls "a generally accepted 
set of presuppositions" which can 
be readily imparted to laymen. 

In the various social sciences, no 
such codified body of knowledge has 
existed since at least the Second 
World War. "Everybody's off doing 
his own thing," comments one so¬ 
cial scientist. "When you're doing 
your own thing, and your thing is 
highly specialized, you don't mess 
with laymen who lack your com¬ 
mitment." In addition, mastery of 
economics, political science, and soci¬ 
ology today requires an impressive 
store of statistical or mathematical 
knowledge which is beyond the reach 
even of undergraduate majors. The 
specialist therefore finds the teaching 
of undergraduates not only uninter¬ 
esting but intellectually dishonest, be¬ 
cause he feels that he cannot impart 
any worthwhile information without 
dealing in concepts which his stu¬ 
dents lack the training to under¬ 
stand. 

With senior professors ensconced 
in the Graduate School, undergrad¬ 
uate instruction in the social sciences 
is left largely to the junior faculty: 
assistant professors, instructors, and 
preceptors. Within the College it¬ 
self, however, another de facto di¬ 
vision emerges. Assistant professors 
are needed to teach upper College 
courses, and cannot be spared for 
CC. Nor is it likely that many would 
want to be. Their dissertations may 
be out of the way, but they must 
nevertheless publish to acquire the 


50 




recognition which leads to tenure. 
CC would make too many demands 
upon their time. The introductory 
social science course, therefore, re¬ 
mains in the hands of graduate stu¬ 
dents: the instructor and, more re¬ 
cently, the part-time preceptor. 

The Truman Committee ad¬ 
dressed itself to this problem as 
early as 1960, when it recommended 
that teachers of CC and Humanities 
receive sabbaticals after two-and-a- 
half or three years in the program. 
The recommendation was accepted 
with the creation of the Chamber- 
lain fellowships, pursuant to which 
all faculty receive a semester's paid 
leave after three years of teaching 
either course. But CC chairman Jo¬ 
seph Rothschild '52 is skeptical about 
the results. “If someone's been teach¬ 
ing five semesters/' says Rothschild, 
“the Chamberlains will induce him 
to remain for a sixth. But they won't 
make him volunteer for the course 
in the first place." 

It seems likely, therefore, that if 
CC continues to be offered, it will 
be staffed for the foreseeable future 
by teachers who not only are grad¬ 
uate students, but can commit barely 
a couple of years—if that—to the pro¬ 
gram. This, many believe, is the prin¬ 
cipal difficulty with the course. 

The preceptor theory was suc¬ 
cinctly expounded by Prof. Belknap 
when he told a luncheon meeting of 
the CC staff that “the problem is not 
age, it is not seniority, it is turn¬ 
over." A teacher, he indicated, tends 
to improve each year for at least the 
first decade of his career. If CC is to 
be taught exclusively by novices, it 
can be little more than a nursery in 
which fledgling academicians cut 
their teeth at the expense of their 
students—and then go on, for the 
most part, to utilize at other uni¬ 
versities the experience they've ac¬ 
quired here. 

Belknap's thesis—that teachers 
improve with experience—is surely 
sound enough. However, it is less 
clear that high turnover is a signif¬ 
icant new factor in CC's present dif¬ 
ficulties. Dean of the Graduate Fac¬ 
ulties George K. Fraenkel scoffs at 
the notion, pointing out that the 
problem has existed for many years. 

There is impressive evidence that 
Dean Fraenkel is right. In 1960, the 
Truman Committee estimated the an¬ 
nual turnover in CC at 50 per cent 
—approximately the same figure as 
today. A statistical study, prepared 
the following year, suggests that the 
problem dates back even further. 


The study analyzed the composition 
of the CC staff by rank, department, 
and length of service between 1935 
and 1961. The war years were 
omitted, so the survey covered a 
22 year period. During all but three 
of those years, at least half the 
teachers were participating in the 
program for the first time. 

Nor was there ever a significant 
number of senior faculty among the 
remainder, to guide the newcomers. 
In the entire period covered by the 
survey, the staff at no time included 
more than four men who had taught 
the course for five years or longer. 
As far back as 1938, there was only 
one CC teacher with more than four 
years of experience. 

The survey also indicates that CC 
never attracted a significant number 
of teachers above the rank of instruc¬ 
tor. Over the 22-year period CC has 
had an average of three assistant pro¬ 
fessors, one associate professor, and 
one full professor annually. 

The staffing problem, then, is al¬ 
most as old as CC itself, and can 
hardly account for the mounting at¬ 
tacks upon the course. Since these at¬ 
tacks are of recent origin, it is likely 
that the problems are also of recent 
origin: that they have been either 
created, or else exacerbated or made 
visible, by developments within the 
past few years. 

The most obvious of such devel¬ 
opments is the change in the nature 
of students, many of whom not only 
rebel against faculty-imposed require¬ 
ments, but are increasingly anti- 
Western, anti-historical, and—in the 
eyes of their elders—anti-intellectual. 

CC is, of course, a study of con¬ 
temporary civilization in the West. 
Justus Buchler wrote: 

Such a limitation was made 
not . . . from perversity and false 
cultural pride, but because West¬ 
ern society is the society of 
Western students, and because 
the number of available men 
versed in Eastern culture has al¬ 
ways been lamentably small. 

Nor was the course designed as a 
neutral, dispassionate survey of West¬ 
ern institutions. On the contrary, its 
very origins denote on the part of its 
founders a firm commitment to the 
West. In Prof. Buchler's words, CC 
“sprang from the prosaic circum¬ 
stance of a military mandate." At the 
height of World War I, the govern¬ 
ment called upon Columbia to formu¬ 


late a “War Issues" course, the 
avowed aim of which was to explain 
to students the values which the Allies 
were defending. A syllabus was sub¬ 
mitted to Washington, and within 
weeks the course was instituted, not 
only at Columbia but at all colleges 
participating in the Students' Army 
Training Corps program. While it was 
still in progress, several Columbia 
faculty members—notably Dean of the 
Graduate Faculties Frederick J. E. 
Woodbridge, Dean of the College 
Herbert E. Hawkes, and Prof, (later 
Dean) Harry J. Carman—looked ahead 
to the creation of a “Peace Issues" 
course after the war had ended. When 
the “Peace Issues" course was estab¬ 
lished, under the title “Contemporary 
Civilization," in the fall of 1919, 
President Nicholas Murray Butler 
hailed it as an antidote both to "the 
cruder and more stupid forms of radi¬ 
calism" and "the more stubborn 
forms of conservatism." A full quarter- 
century later, the pro-Western orien¬ 
tation of the program was affirmed in 
the report of the Steeves Committee: 

Through such a study of our 
past, values emerge: that we live 
in a free society in which the spir¬ 
its of justice, love, and scientific 
inquiry have been the touch¬ 
stones to social invention; that in 
such a society the individual has 
labored to achieve freedom from 
an arbitrary authority (whether 
ecclesiastical or political) and that 
in a climate of experimental sci¬ 
ence, technology, and liberal- 
capitalist institutions, man seeks 
to shape his world to achieve wel¬ 
fare for himself and for con¬ 
stantly growing numbers of the 
human race. 

Today many undergraduates are 
acutely aware of other systems and 
as acutely critical of their own. The 
principal reasons are too obvious to 
require elaboration: the growing im¬ 
portance of the so-called "third 
world," and profound disillusionment 
with the foreign and domestic policies 
of the essentially liberal-capitalist so¬ 
ciety to which the students belong. 
Yet another reason is suggested by 
Assistant Professor of English Morris 
Dickstein '61. Says Dickstein: “We 
were trying to break into Western cul¬ 
ture from the outside. Our parents 
were immigrants, or at least hadn't 
been to college. These kids are prod¬ 
ucts of the suburbs. Their parents have 
made it. They're not trying to break 
into the Western world, but are trying 


51 







to break out of it, because they see in 
their parents caricatures of what we 
were trying to become." Moreover, 
some students—and a few teachers— 
ascribe the emphasis of the Western 
tradition not merely to chauvinism 
but to outright racism: an implied 
belittling of non-Western, non-white 
societies. 

It is one thing, however, to re¬ 
ject Western institutions; it is quite 
another to refuse to examine them. 
Yet certain students—it is impossible 
to say how many—seem not to dis¬ 
tinguish between examining a tradi¬ 
tion and accepting it. As one teacher 
suggests, "They equate studying some¬ 
thing with submitting to a trial." By 
adhering voluntarily to the procedural 
rules of the court, one impliedly con¬ 
cedes that the rules are legitimate. By 
studying Western culture, one tacitly 
assumes its validity. 

"The old radicalism," laments As¬ 
sociate Professor of Philosophy Martin 
Golding, "was at least historical and 
scientific. Today's is romantic." With 
these words, he put his finger on yet 
another one of CC's problems. For 
CC is, in the broadest sense of the 
term, a "history" course. To be sure, 
one of its purposes is to illustrate the 
interdependence of the various dis¬ 
ciplines: to instill, in Prof. Buchler's 
phrase, "the sense of interconnected¬ 
ness in human issues." To compart¬ 
mentalize CC by calling it "history" 
is, perhaps, as glib and misleading as 
the compartmentalization of the 
numerous issues which it raises. The 
fact remains, however, that it ap¬ 
proaches these issues in approxi¬ 
mately chronological order. Such an 
approach is historical. And today's 
students are often impatient with his¬ 
tory—except when it has some direct, 
immediate, demonstrable relevance 
to their own lives. 

The very title of the course— Con¬ 
temporary Civilization—implies that 
the past is relevant. Indeed, another 
of its aims is to impart to students an 
understanding of their roots—or, more 
precisely, of the roots of the Western 
society in which they were reared. 
But relevance, thus defined, holds no 
allure. Students seem to want the 
great thinkers of the past to speak di¬ 
rectly to the issues of the day; not the 
timeless, fundamental issues which 
persist in every age. 

This anti-historicism baffles in¬ 
structors schooled in the more book¬ 
ish atmosphere of the 'fifties. It also 
raises problems for teachers who 
try to meet their students halfway. 
"There are two ways of showing 


relevance," says Morris Dickstein, 
"and neither one works if pursued too 
narrowly. You can try to correlate dif¬ 
ferent historical periods—our own age 
with some other epoch—but that can 
become intellectually sloppy and dis¬ 
honest. Or you can try to get the stu¬ 
dent to relate to the writers in a 
directly human way, as we do in Hu¬ 
manities. The trouble with that ap¬ 
proach is that the study of history has 
become, in a sense, dehumanized. 
Perhaps the old, narrative history 
never explored personalities in depth, 
but at least it dealt with people. To¬ 
day's history is so much more imper¬ 
sonal, because we now know that 
there are impersonal forces which are 
at least as important as the role of 
great individuals. But a 19-year-old kid 
can't relate to impersonal forces. He 
finds it hard, at that age, to acknowl¬ 
edge the existence of impersonal 
forces in his own life." 

One difficulty in getting students 
to "relate" to their past, according to 
some social and behavioral scientists, 
is that they have no past. The atomic 
age differs so sharply from the older 
society that those born into it cannot 
identify with anything which went be¬ 
fore. 

Perhaps so. There is, however, 
another explanation for the anti-his¬ 
toricism of college students. 


In 1951, Prof. Buchler addressed 
himself to a suggestion which has 
been made many times before and 
since—most recently, by the Colahan 
Committee, which considered it and 
then rejected it. This was to begin 
the course with current issues, and 
work backwards into the past. By ap¬ 
proaching problems chronologically, 
argued Prof. Buchler, the student "has 
not only gained a sufficient scientific 
detachment for the more analytical 
study that is to deal with contempor¬ 
ary society, but he can be both more 
critical and more constructive than he 
would otherwise be, because he is 
less gullible and more historically- 
minded." It is, Buchler conceded, "as 
difficult for him to identify with the 
past as it is for him to detach himself 
from the present." 

Many of the brighter students—at 
Columbia and elsewhere—do not seem 
to want to analyze the present with 
scientific detachment, any more than 
they wish to become historically- 
minded. In short, their anti-historicism 
is a manifestation of a much more 
significant phenomenon. Some teach¬ 
ers and administrators call this phe¬ 
nomenon anti-intellectualism. It is 
anti-intellectualism, they warn, far 
more than the indifference of the de¬ 
partments, which threatens the integ¬ 
rity and even the life of the College. 



52 








Vice-President and Dean of Fac¬ 
ulties Polykarp Kusch expressed such 
a view when he decried "disrespect 
for learning per se; increased em¬ 
phasis on feeling, intuition, and sensi¬ 
bility; and reliance on instinct and 
perception — uninformed by knowl¬ 
edge and critical examination — in¬ 
stead of ideas." Commenting on the 
seeming rejection of abstract reason¬ 
ing, and of any knowledge which can¬ 
not be applied directly to the solution 
of personal or social problems, Kusch 
observed: "The commitment of this 
institution is that all knowledge is rel¬ 
evant. If you're going to proceed with 
disregard for objectivity and critical 
analysis, then I find it hard to see how 
Columbia College would have much 
rationale." 

Others are less willing to label 
students anti-intellectual. "They're 
merely saying in public what we used 
to say in private," demurs English pre¬ 
ceptor Robert Newsom '66, a com¬ 
mittee member. Mr. Newsom agrees, 
however, that there are differences 
between his own classmates and the 
current crop of undergraduates. "We 
said scandalous things about our 
teachers," he recalls, "but not about 
Aristotle. 

"Of course," he adds, "it's prob¬ 
ably a good thing to entertain some 
scandalous notions about Aristotle. 


We shouldn't think of anyone as being 
sacred." 

What makes today's students 
unique, suggests Prof. Dickstein, is 
that they are "aggressively and articu¬ 
lately hostile to the classics," instead 
of being merely bored. Dr. Dickstein, 
too, questions whether the term "anti¬ 
intellectual" is appropriate. "I would 
accept the word 'impatient,' " he 
says. "But anti-intellectualism implies 
know-nothingism, and that is defi¬ 
nitely not what we are seeing on this 
campus. My students, for example, 
come to life and do brilliant work 
when they deal with historical figures 
with whom they can identify." Prof. 
Dickstein notes that he has had par¬ 
ticular success in teaching Blake, who 
was as alientated from his own so¬ 
ciety as many students are from theirs. 

There is general agreement, how¬ 
ever, that bookishness has declined 
among students at Columbia and 
other institutions. Just as observers 
disagree over what to name the phe¬ 
nomenon, they also have a field day 
debating its causes. A common reac¬ 
tion 5 is to write it off to student re¬ 
jection of "delayed gratification," in¬ 
cluding painstaking logical analysis 
which often leads to partial, tentative, 
unsatisfactory and—above all—remote 
solutions. 

That may be a small part of the 


answer. The problem, however, is 
much more complex. 

Students in the 1950s were taught 
to believe implicitly in the efficacy of 
the "marketplace of ideas," where 
truth emerged from thoughtful an¬ 
alysis of the issues and free, open de¬ 
bate. Moreover, the campus of the 
'fifties was, in the words of Assistant 
Professor of Economics and Belknap 
Committee member Raymond Lubitz, 
a "retreat from the world": a sort of 
intellectual cloister for the disengaged 
students and faculty of the period. In 
such an atmosphere, it was easy for 
the university to appear as an essen¬ 
tially "neutral" or "value-free" insti¬ 
tution committed only to unhindered 
scholarly inquiry. 

Today students accept the princi¬ 
ple which the late C. Wright Mills be¬ 
gan to expound towards the close of 
the 'fifties: that the "marketplace of 
ideas," like the economic market¬ 
place, is really dominated by power 
blocs which do not respond to rea¬ 
soned argument. Moreover, these 
blocs so monopolize the communica¬ 
tions media that traditional forms of 
dissent are reduced to acts of per¬ 
sonal catharsis, rather than meaning¬ 
ful exercises of political power. Stu¬ 
dents frequently respond in one of 
two ways: by seeking to confront the 
power structure with revolutionary 


SOCIETY INVADES THE CLOISTER: S.D.S. sign beckons to freshmen in a CC class. 



53 



power blocs of their own, or by giving 
up, dropping out, and turning on. 

In primitive societies, it was not 
unknown for people to batter the 
images of gods who had failed to pre¬ 
vent disaster. In like manner, students 
today abandon reason because it 
seems powerless to achieve solutions 
to the world's problems. 

Some attribute the failure of rea¬ 
son to the intransigence of the power 
structure, which has rejected rational 
counsel. The last two administrations 
have been especially deaf to the pleas 
of antiwar intellectuals, who have 
consequently become pathetic and 
impotent figures in the eyes of the 
young. Others go a step further: they 
identify dispassionate, "value-free" 
analysis with game theory and Mc¬ 
Namara's Whiz Kids. Accordingly 
they see in the Vietnam horror, not a 
rejection of rationality, but its ulti¬ 
mate triumph. 

In either case, they react with an 
anger so intense and passionate that 
it is sometimes inarticulate. This 
anger has two targets: the power 
structure which has paid no heed to 
their more temperate expressions of 
protest, and which threatens in a very 
real sense to kill them by conscripting 
them to fight in a war they detest; and 
intellectuals, who persist in applying 
the old painstaking and circuitous 
techniques to crises which cry out for 
more immediate remedies. 

Commentators who dwell on the 
politicalization of the young often for¬ 
get that politicalization is a two-way 
street. Not only has the student 
emerged from the cloister; society has 
invaded it. Formerly the undergradu¬ 
ate lived in a world which was cir¬ 
cumscribed intellectually as well as 
physically by the classroom, the li¬ 
brary, the dormitory and perhaps the 
fraternity house. Today he moves from 
his 11 o'clock CC class into the midst 
of a political demonstration at the 
Sundial. In the ensuing juxtaposition 
of Vietnam and the classics, the latter 
assert a less compelling claim to at¬ 
tention. 

Ten years ago, there was no sense 
of crisis on the campus. The student 
could immerse himself in Greek 
philosophy or Restoration drama 
without feeling that he was being di¬ 


"Today the student moves from his 11 
o'clock CC class into the midst of a po¬ 
litical demonstration at the Sundial. In the 
ensuing juxtaposition of Vietnam and the 
classics, the latter assert a less compelling 
claim to attention/' 


verted from more pressing issues. 
Now, as one senior put it, "the world 
is plunging toward disaster, and 
they're still feeding us Aristotle." This 
attitude, which seems to be shared 
by many undergraduates, places 
teachers on the defensive. Comments 
Prof. Lubitz: "They feel they have to 
sell their product." 

Moreover, students have rejected 
what they call the "myth" of the 
value-free university, citing Colum¬ 
bia's investment practices and former 
institutional involvement in defense 
research. The very failure to act af¬ 
firmatively to abolish inequities, they 
maintain (e.g., in the hiring and com¬ 
pensation of black workers), implies 
a commitment to the values of the 
present system. Prof. Schein suggests 
that one reason why freshmen turn 
away from general education is be¬ 
cause "they perceive the hypocrisy of 
the contradictions between the 'dis¬ 
interested life of the mind'—as pre¬ 
sented in CC and Humanities—and the 
University as it really is." 


Kusch and others stress that the 
change in student attitudes is by no 
means unique to Columbia. But, ac¬ 
cording to Committee member Allen 
Silver, an associate professor in the 
Sociology department, "Columbia 
probably finds it harder than most 
places to roll with the punch. 

"Columbia's claim to greatness," 
Prof. Silver observes, "has been its 
bookishness. We don't purport to 
teach 'maturity' or build 'integrated 
personalities.' Our mystique is the 
mystique of the book. A nation-wide 
decline in bookishness hits us with 
particular force." 

Whatever the reasons, many stu¬ 
dents seem impatient with courses 
which attempt to point up the com¬ 
plexity of issues, or impart techniques 
for dispassionate analysis. An obvious 
target is CC, which aims to do both 
at the onset of a student's career. 

CC has also been affected by 
more subtle, but equally profound 
changes among the faculty. These 


54 







changes reflect shifts in emphasis in 
the professional training of young 
teachers, and in their respective dis¬ 
ciplines. 

A frequently proclaimed advan¬ 
tage of an' interdisciplinary program 
is that it brings different perspectives 
to bear upon the various problems. 
In stressing differences, it is easy to 
forget that the participating depart¬ 
ments must also have a great deal 
in common if the program is to be 
coherent. But specialization today is 
so intense that two scholars in the 
same discipline often have difficulty 
communicating professionally. It is 
even more difficult for them to find 
common ground with experts in other 
fields. 

CC has always been accused of 
superficiality because of its self-pro¬ 
fessed aim to touch only upon the 
essentials of several different disci¬ 
plines. In the past, its proponents have 
been able to answer the charge to the 
satisfaction of most of their col¬ 
leagues. The problem today is that the 


essentials have changed, and grown 
more complex and difficult to master. 
Moreover, each of the social sciences 
has become so diffuse that it is well- 
nigh impossible to identify the "es¬ 
sentials" of any of them. One can 
speak only of the essentials of their 
numerous sub-specialties. 

One consequence of specializa¬ 
tion, then, has been to raise doubts 
about the intellectual validity of an 
interdisciplinary program. Another 
has been to wreak havoc with the 
CC reading list—for now that the sub¬ 
ject-areas lack a common language or 
body of knowledge, specialists find it 
difficult to agree on significant au¬ 
thors. A third and equally important 
result is that social scientists have be¬ 
come as unhistorical as their students. 

The reason is readily perceived. 
Economists who have little in com¬ 
mon with one another are likely to 
have even less in common with econ¬ 
omists of a generation earlier. Modern 
developments in each of the social sci¬ 
ences are so different from anything 



done in the past that they have no 
roots in the history of the discipline. 
Political science used to emphasize 
political theory, which was philosoph¬ 
ical as well as historical. Today it 
emphasizes behaviorism, which is 
neither. Even historians, according to 
Associate Professor of History David 
Rothman, who serves on the Belknap 
committee, no longer concern them¬ 
selves with "the broad sweep." De¬ 
partments have responded by reduc¬ 
ing the historical content of doctoral 
programs. It is possible, say econo¬ 
mists, to acquire a Ph.D. without hav¬ 
ing read Malthus or Adam Smith. 

The effects of specialization are 
felt even on the undergraduate level. 
As the graduate schools demanded a 
higher degree of preparation from ap¬ 
plicants for admission, the depart¬ 
ments raised the requirements for the 
undergraduate major—until, five years 
ago, the College faculty finally put a 
halt to the process by limiting the 
number of hours which a student had 
to complete in his major field. There¬ 
fore, argues Professor of Economics 
Harold Barger, younger teachers are 
not as liberally educated as their older 
colleagues. 

If the trend persists, the outlook 
for CC is grim, as fewer and fewer 
graduate students will possess the 
historical or general background the 
course requires. 


"CC," wrote Justus Buchler, "was 
literally born revising itself. There has 
always been and there will always be 
a CC Revision Committee." And the 
Steeves report proclaimed that "be¬ 
tween 1919 and 1946 the Contempor¬ 
ary Civilization course has been com¬ 
pletely revised at least half a dozen 
times . . . Here exactly is to be found 
the secret of the course's vitality." 

It is easy to understand why con¬ 
stant revision is necessary. The ma¬ 
terials are, as one teacher described 
them, "synthetic." They are not 
chosen because they are master¬ 
pieces, but because they illuminate 
issues, and perspectives on these is¬ 
sues change. 

In the past, therefore, revision has 
been a sign of health, not a symptom 
of disease. There are indications that 
this is no longer so. 

One difference is that earlier al¬ 
terations were undertaken to improve 
an already successful syllabus. The 
purpose of the latest overhauling, 
in 1968, was to meet student and fa¬ 
culty criticisms and revive flagging in¬ 
terest in the program. Another is that 


55 


a satisfactory reading list has become 
difficult to devise. This is partly be¬ 
cause of the growing diffusion of the 
social sciences, and partly because the 
staff no longer shares, as it once did, 
a common, Marxist-oriented approach 
to history. "For the old left," Prof. 
Rothschild explains, "a coherent list 
emerged more easily." Now, as a 
former instructor has written, not only 
is the faculty not united on a single 
"grand interpretation of history," but 
most have lost faith that any "grand 
interpretation" exists. 

Prior to 1968, the course was cri¬ 
ticized principally for its supposed 
superficiality. Many faculty members 
maintain that the readings were too 
sketchy to impart any worthwhile 
knowledge. Students complained of 
the breathless pace which, they al¬ 
leged, left them no time to digest the 
content. Moreover, it was commonly 
believed that the breadth of the sub¬ 
ject-matter imposed impossible de¬ 
mands upon the faculty, especially 
inexperienced preceptors and instruc¬ 
tors who were wrestling simultane¬ 
ously with the materials and their own 
dissertations. 

Another complaint was that the 
syllabus "telescoped" history, rushing 
from the Middle Ages into the Ren¬ 
aissance, and condensing several cen¬ 
turies into a few hours. So hurried a 
treatment, it was argued, could only 
create erroneous impressions of the 
different periods. 

In April, 1968, the CC staff met at 
Arden House in Harriman, New York. 
In the course of a weekend it ham¬ 
mered out an entirely new syllabus, 
which is still in use. The number of 
authors has been reduced, but the 
source books have been abandoned 
and replaced by whole texts, supple¬ 
mented by mimeographed handouts. 
Thus, instead of reading 20 pages of 
Hobbes, freshmen must wade through 
large chunks of the Leviathan. The fall 
semester begins with Aristotle's 
Politics , then jumps forward nearly 
two milleniums into the Renaissance. 
The spring semester is given over to a 
study of revolution, with particular 
emphasis upon the French and Rus¬ 
sian upheavals. 

The consensus among outsiders 
to the program seems to be that the 
latest revision has addressed itself suc¬ 
cessfully to some of the chronic short¬ 
comings of CC, but in doing so has 
created new problems. Historians 
complain that the attention given to 
revolutionary change misleads stu¬ 
dents into believing that progress oc¬ 
curs in no other way. Another crit¬ 


icism is that the readings have been 
removed from their environmental 
context, and are presented in a vac¬ 
uum, so that students acquire no 
sense of the interaction between ideas 
and institutions. "CC has become a 
political science course," charged 
Prof. Barger, who wants no further 
part of it. According to some, the em¬ 
phasis upon ideas has the same effect 
as the emphasis upon revolution: it 
suggests to students that ideas play a 
greater role than they really do in 
causing change. 

One of the most persistent criti¬ 
cisms is levelled against the use of 
whole texts. This complaint is based 
both on practical and ideological con¬ 
siderations. The pragmatic objection 
is that the texts—unlike most Human¬ 
ities readings—are dull. The ideologi¬ 
cal argument was summarized by Prof. 
Buchler when he wrote: "In CC, they 
[the materials] are read as sources, as 
data; in Humanities they are read as 
self-sufficient creations, as ends in 
themselves. This difference is funda¬ 
mental. ..." Humanities, he ex¬ 
plained, 

is concerned primarily with the 
human product as a product. 
... In CC, on the other hand, the 
reading is important primarily for 
its implications, whether con¬ 
ceptual or historical. It is for this 
reason that in CC the sources can 
function as selections. . . . 

According to Prof. Barger, CC has 
"degenerated" into a great books 
course without the great books. 

The staff itself is divided over 
whether the change has been for the 
better. Martin Baron, an historian who 
has taught both the old course and 
the new one, is enthusiastic about the 
present program. "No one knows 
enough to teach 'Western Civiliza¬ 
tion,' " argues Baron. "The old CC 
wasn't a course, it was a public re¬ 
lations gimmick." But some of his 
colleagues believe that the revised 
syllabus makes even greater demands 
upon the instructor. One points out 
that "it's easier to learn a little about 
12 authors than a lot about six." 

If CC is in trouble, it is not be¬ 
cause of lack of commitment or dedi¬ 
cation on the part of its staff. The 
Truman Committee was concerned 
about low faculty morale; morale to¬ 
day is excellent. This is reflected in 
high attendance at the weekly CC 
luncheons, which fare far better in 
that respect than the luncheon gather¬ 
ings of Humanities teachers. 


"Morale is always high in 
bombed-out areas," quips a former 
CC instructor. But that does not ac¬ 
count for the prevailing esprit. One 
explanation, perhaps, is the person¬ 
ality of the chairman, who appears to 
have created a remarkable sense of 
community among young teachers 
who feel lost in their huge depart¬ 
ments. But the principal factor is the 
belief of all that they are engaged in 
a sound, worthwhile enterprise. 

A number react with particular 
vehemence to the charge of super¬ 
ficiality, which is still levelled against 
CC, although it has been somewhat 
muted since the 1968 reform. The re¬ 
sponse of Walter Odajnyk is typical. 
Mr. Odajnyk, a political science in¬ 
structor, says, "If I can teach my stu¬ 
dents that these are different ways of 
approaching a problem—through rea¬ 
son and the feelings; explain to them 
how these differences are expressed 
in the writings of Hume and Kant; and 
raise interesting questions, then I've 
taught them something important. I 
don't have to exhaust the subject. I let 
them know that we're only skimming 
the surface, and it isn't the teacher's 
fault if a freshman comes out of a 
calculus course thinking he's Einstein." 

Many CC teachers are bewildered 
at attacks from outside the program. 
A few are resentful. Said one: "A lot 
of people on the Educational Policy 
Committee feel they have to recom¬ 
mend some drastic changes in order 
to justify their existence, appease 
radical students, and give the ap¬ 
pearance of responsiveness. CC is just 
the sacrificial lamb." Why CC? "May¬ 
be because Belknap is also chairman 
of Humanities." Others are quick to 
point out that four committee mem¬ 
bers are teaching Humanities this 
year, while none presently teaches 
CC. A few suggest that the com¬ 
mittee's composition reflects the bias 
of Dean Hovde. Dean Hovde, who ap¬ 
pointed the group, has taught Human¬ 
ities himself. Sighs one: "Maybe we're 
paranoid, but paranoids have enemies 
too." 

Committee members deny that 
they are suggesting revision in order 
to placate students. "Even if we 
wanted to do that," argues Prof. 
Lubitz, "it wouldn't work, because 
we'd always be a couple of years be¬ 
hind. By the time we get around to 
satisfying the demands of this years' 
juniors and seniors, they'll have grad¬ 
uated, and a new group will come 
along and want something else." A 
curriculum cannot maintain continu¬ 
ity if it is always responsive to under- 


56 



graduates. There have been too many 
generation gaps in the 'sixties alone. 

The worst fears of the CC staff 
have so far failed to materialize. The 
committee's tentative recommenda¬ 
tions will affect Humanities as much 
as CC — unless, as is possible, CC 
should prove less able to compete 
with the new first-year options when 
and if they are implemented. 

More than any other course, CC 
has been identified with Columbia 
College. And more than any other 
course, it has been buffeted by the 
startling changes which have swept 
over the nation's campuses during the 
past decade. 

Thomas Jefferson advocated po¬ 
litical revolution in every generation. 
Some professors have held that aca¬ 
demic institutions should be com¬ 
pletely recast every 25 years. CC has 
been around for 50. Perhaps it is time 
that this great program, which has left 
its mark on so many students here and 
elsewhere, gave way to newer ones, 
more in keeping with the temper of 
modern undergraduates and their 
teachers. 

It is possible, on the other hand, 
that CC is merely bearing the brunt 
of a transient wave of anti-historicism 
and anti-intellectualism, and, if left 
alone, will eventually ride out the 
storm. 

Even if the course is still basically 
sound, its eventual disappearance 
would not necessarily be a tragedy. 
Many of its most ardent defenders 
concede that bright undergraduates 
will benefit from any well-taught pro¬ 
gram. 

The springtime of CC must in¬ 
deed have been joyous. "In those 
days," mused Justus Buchler, 
when you were requested to write 
a piece for CC, you found your¬ 
self doing it; you couldn't resist, 
and, anyhow, you had always 
wanted to do something like it— 
that's why you were collaborating 
in a new enterprise ... It is im¬ 
possible to recall anyone who 
contributed in a grudging way, 
despite the drain on personal 
time, or (for the most part) the 
likelihood of anonymity. 

It is not so important to preserve 
the institutions which gave birth to 
that spirit, the spirit of the 'twenties 
and early 'thirties. The spirit itself must 
somehow take hold again among the 
new institutions which will emerge 
during the 'seventies. 



Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hansot maintains that freshmen who 
want to be treated as adults must learn to live with the consequences 
of their mistakes. 


According to CC's critics, the course is so superficial that students can 
pass by relying exclusively on commercial outlines, known as "trots." 



57 






CURRICULUM IN TRANSITION: 
SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS 


By Robert Belknap 


Long-established educational practices are under widespread attack today, at Columbia and throughout 
the country. Critics include students, faculty, and even political leaders from neighboring communities. When 
their criticisms are well-founded, teachers and administrators respond more often than not with reasoned 
changes. 

But change also occurs in other, less benign ways. Many universities are pressed for funds. The resulting 
financial squeeze can lead to sweeping revisions in a school's entire program. These come about, not because 
they are educationally sound, but as reflexes of a straitened budget. Or, the administration may knuckle under 
to important or persuasive groups of students, alumni, or outsiders who are indifferent to the interests of the 
institution as a whole. 

At Columbia, political and economic pressures are leading to precisely such mindless changes. These 
changes, if unchecked, may destroy Columbia College. 

As Dean of the College, Carl Hovde is acutely aware of the danger. At the end of 1969, he appointed a 
Committee on Educational Policy. No doubt he worried about adding to the number of committees already 
distracting his colleagues from teaching, and also the number of man-hours expended on educational policy 
during the past decade with little visible effect. He decided nevertheless to establish this committee because 
he wants Columbia College to survive. 

The greatest danger to the College comes not from any forces of evil, nor even from the real expansion 
of the College's own needs. It comes, rather, from a triumph of fiscal rationalization which was supposed to 
enrich the Graduate School at no expense to anyone. To compete with richer universities for the very best 
graduate students in the country, Columbia must offer immense sums in fellowships, a doctorate obtainable 
in very few years, and some training in teaching, which the students need and often want. The solution was 
brilliant in its simplicity. Columbia College used to spend immense sums for full-time instructors who often 
remained graduate students for many years. Henceforward, two or three graduate students would subsist as 
preceptors on the salary of a single instructor. By working part-time to teach the same courses, they would 
finish their dissertations in a year or two, making way for another crop of graduate students. 

Such a benign and ingenious way of getting something for nothing should in fairness not have a flaw. 
In certain departments with flocks of eager laboratory instructors, it may indeed work well. But elsewhere, 
one hard fact has supervened. Our graduate students are not fiscal entities, but people. Unlike sums of money, 


58 





these people need offices, training, experience, an 
introduction into the history, politics, and sociology 
of a wildly confusing university, and most important 
of all, real intellectual discourse with their older col¬ 
leagues. The full-time instructor who used to stay on 
for eight years had been selected to serve as a mem¬ 
ber of the department, ff he learned more than his 
students in his first year, he repaid the debt with 
interest later on: to other students, and to a genera¬ 
tion of younger colleagues. But if his work is done 
by two graduate students, and they change every 
year or two, the older staff of Columbia College is 
being asked to assimilate, without junior assistance, 
sixteen times as many new teachers. As a result, Co¬ 
lumbia freshmen face the possibility of taking all their 
courses from preceptors as alien to the place as them¬ 
selves. 

In short, the quick turnover of junior staff consti¬ 
tutes, for the College, a well-intentioned catastrophe. 
Such a turnover has already begun, and the pressures 
to accelerate it are mounting. Our committee must 
plot a course among three possible responses. 

First, we can cooperate with the graduate depart¬ 
ments. Their position is desperate, and we have to 
investigate all possible ways of using the services of 
short-term assistants without compromising our 
standards. Second, we can seek means to resist the 
Graduate School when its demands become exces¬ 
sive. It is hard to determine in the abstract how great 
a turnover we can absorb without loss of quality. But 
one does not always need an objective standard to 
perceive a clear abuse. When—as has recently hap¬ 
pened—the head of a College department is told that 
he may not appoint full-time instructors without the 
approval of the Dean of the Graduate School, or 
reappoint preceptors for more than two years except 
in extraordinary circumstances, the pressures on the 
Graduate School are obviously beginning to hurt us. 
If we find that the College cannot achieve greater 
bargaining power in the selection of its junior staff, 
nor function properly without it, we must consider 
whether the third response, the dissolution of the 
College, would not be the most honest move. 

The second great danger to the College involves 
the senior faculty. All over the country, scholarship 
has grown specialized and often remote from the 
concerns of undergraduates. In the social sciences 
especially, many senior men avoid College teaching 
because most undergraduates cannot understand the 
fashionable specialties which demand an elaborate 
background in mathematics. An economist who 
studied Malthus could profit from teaching Contem¬ 
porary Civilization. An economist constructing a ma¬ 
trix to explore alternative investment policies for an 
African republic probably lacks both the desire to 
teach Contemporary Civilization and the intellectual 
equipment to teach it well. 

Columbia tries to reward teaching. Since, how¬ 
ever, our financial plight forces us to pay what the 
market will bear, professors' salaries will depend not 
on their service to the University or its students, but 


on their ability to attract generous outside offers. 
Even if a professor is devoted to Columbia and wants 
to spend his life here, low salary scales and high living 
costs force him either to moonlight, or else expend 
great energies on professional conferences, lectures 
and consultations off campus, and the publication of 
conspicuous articles. Such activities produce the job 
offers which pry raises out of recalcitrant deans, but 
conflict with the arduous preparation which our 
freshman and sophomore courses require. Moreover, 
underclassmen rarely make the kind of disciples or 
assistants who help build a professor's career. It is 
difficult to preserve a general education program 
which pays senior men less for teaching more. 

The third great danger to the College issues not 
from the faculty but from the students. Alexander 
Hamilton used to speak of three elites: the rich, the 
well-born, and the able. In past generations, it could 
be argued, the basic character of Yale was set by the 
rich, and of Harvard by a few dozen leading families, 
while Columbia's education was directed toward the 
finest and most aggressive young intellects of the day. 
This able and energetic group still constitutes the 
majority of College students, but it no longer domi¬ 
nates the College in numbers or influence. 

The number of these students has decreased be¬ 
cause of political and economic pressures on admis¬ 
sions. Columbia admits no students who lack the 
brains to pass its courses. But passing courses does 
not mean getting an education. Although it is very 
hard to do well at Columbia, it is almost as hard for a 
student to flunk out if he attends classes, hands in 
his papers, and takes his examinations. 

Professor of Russian Robert L. Belknap chaired the Committee 
on Educational Policy, which met during the spring semester of 
1970. He is also chairman of the Humanities program. Prof. 
Belknap, a Princeton graduate, received his M.A. and Ph.D. from 
Columbia. Since this article was written, his Committee has 
recommended major changes in the entire College curriculum, 
beginning with the freshman year. The faculty will vote on the 
proposals in the fall. 



59 







Students today expect from their teachers greater informality 
and a less authoritarian approach. 


Assistant Dean Robert A. Laudicina addresses his freshman 
CC class. Like many instructors in the program, Dean Laudicina 
has been teaching the course for only two years. 


60 







I would not have it otherwise. 
Certainly I do not propose that Co¬ 
lumbia flunk out half its students, or 
admit only those applicants who will 
apply themselves single-mindedly to 
their course work. There should be 
room for an able student who is satis¬ 
fied to pass his subjects and devote 
50 hours a week to the radio station, 
to a rock combo, to writing the great 
American novel, or to the betterment 
of humanity. 

It is possible, however, for certain 
students to graduate without either 
taking full advantage of what our fac¬ 
ulty and curriculum have to offer, or 
using their time in any other strenuous 
way. Such students have always been 
with us, but it is my impression that 
their numbers have risen in recent 
years. 

Some of those whom Columbia 
does not benefit are admitted by mis¬ 
take, but not many. We have capable 
admissions men. Instead, the College 
very deliberately admits most of these 
students in response to the demands 
of pressure groups. 

Our truly outstanding young intel¬ 
lects are declining not only in num¬ 
bers but in influence as well, because 
they themselves are often not per¬ 
suaded of the validity of their enter¬ 
prise. We have always had students 
who are uninterested in education. 
The alarming thing is that today they 
include many of our brightest under¬ 
graduates. 

Different observers have offered 
different reasons for the change. Fam¬ 
ily pressures have always driven many 
Columbia students, and family pres¬ 
sures work badly in times like the 
present, when rapid social changes 
make parents seem obsolete. This gen¬ 
eration also faces, without any preva¬ 
lent religious faith, the possible eradi¬ 
cation of the human species—and 
therefore, perhaps, finds it difficult to 
postpone any pleasure or expect others 
to do so. Instead of religious guilt, to¬ 
day's undergraduates feel social guilt 
because they think that their own 
wealth and security implicate them in 
war and social injustice. 

These better students have read 
and heard that mysterious and hostile 
forces are "programming" them for 
ignoble use, and few of them possess 
the critical training to question what 
they read and hear. They have grown 
up among technological, legal, eco¬ 
nomic, political and diplomatic prob¬ 
lems so complicated that they tend to 
abandon these problems to the ex¬ 
perts or else to feel that even the ex¬ 
perts are not capable of producing so¬ 


lutions. The ensuing feeling of help¬ 
lessness leads to despair over the uses 
of the human intellect. This despair is 
enhanced by their experiences in the 
high schools. There, the weaker teach¬ 
ers often discourage pupils from chal¬ 
lenging them, while the better ones 
are trained to cultivate self-expression 
and emotional maturity but lack the 
actual knowledge necessary to foster 
critical thinking. As a result, the ma¬ 
jority of students entering Columbia 
College either feel that anything they 
say with sincerity is true and that it is 
an assault on their integrity to chal¬ 
lenge it; or else (and this is even more 
pathetic) that they are not entitled to 
say anything, and that education is 
like watching T.V., the passive absorp¬ 
tion of whatever some unseen center 
chooses to dispense. The rapid turn¬ 
over of College faculty contributes to 
this demoralization of the intellect be¬ 
cause the newest faculty members 
need years to broaden their command 
to the point where they can argue co¬ 
gently beyond a narrow area of spe¬ 
cialization. 


Faced with these problems, and 
also a number of others, our Commit¬ 
tee on Educational Policy has tried to 
avoid the fate of those Columbia com¬ 
mittees which reach excellent conclu¬ 
sions but achieve no action, and of 
those which reach stupid conclusions, 
whether they achieve action or not. 
Dean Hovde made this committee big, 
although he knew that big committees 
are inefficient. The most efficient com¬ 
mittee to investigate education in re¬ 
cent years consisted of one man, Dan¬ 
iel Bell, but his conclusions, often ex¬ 
cellent, were not arrived at with suffi¬ 
cient faculty participation to ensure 
their acceptance. Dean Hovde realized 
that our authority would depend upon 
the presence among us of people 
whom most of the important groups 
at Columbia know and trust. At the 
same time, he tried to select people 
who would serve the College rather 
than any particular constituency. 

The committee has 16 members, 
plus Deans Hovde and Daniel Leab 
ex officio. The constituency which is 
most heavily represented is certainly 
the alumni. 13 of the 18 have studied 
at Columbia College and three of these 
are still doing so. Two are studying in 
the graduate school while they teach 
in the College. Fourare full professors, 
and the rest associate and assistant 
professors. The full and part-time fac¬ 
ulty teach in 13 different departments. 
Three of us are from the natural sci¬ 


ences, six from the social sciences, and 
seven from the humanities. We find it 
hard to categorize ourselves in terms 
of liberalism, radicalism, or conserva¬ 
tism because our positions shift from 
question to question. A man who is 
eager for radical changes in course 
content may view with skepticism pro¬ 
posals to alter teaching methods, so 
that our committee has shown no 
signs of disintegration into anything so 
orderly as a series of blocs or caucuses. 

We have also tried to operate in 
the open. Our minutes have been sent 
to Spectator, and we have already held 
two public meetings to which we in¬ 
vited all comers. As soon as we can 
agree upon tentative proposals we 
shall circulate them widely and solicit 
comments from all quarters before we 
present them to the faculty and the 
Committee on Instruction. 

At our open meetings, students in 
the audience made certain requests 
which we expected and others which 
we did not. We all knew that Colum¬ 
bia appears cold and distant to under¬ 
graduates, that they feel remote not 
only from the faculty and the admin¬ 
istration but, more seriously, from one 
another. It was natural, therefore, that 
they should urge us to find ways of 
making learning a communal experi¬ 
ence. Nor were we surprised when 
they asked us to make at least some 
part of their studies here more rele¬ 
vant to their lives. The word "rele¬ 
vance" has been worn thin in recent 
years, and students are now embar¬ 
rassed to use it. Nevertheless, their 
rejection of postponement and intel¬ 
lection still leads them to crave imme¬ 
diate and visible solutions to immedi¬ 
ate and visible problems. For the pres¬ 
ent, the desire must be reckoned with, 
although in time our students may be 
more willing to grapple with the com¬ 
plexities of life and politics. Finally, 
we were faced with the predictable 
demand for more free electives. The 
demand is not new. In the history of 
our great universities, it has emerged 
during those periods when emphasis 
was shifting from professional training 
to the grooming of a social or political 
elite. It was strong, for example, when 
President Eliot of Harvard forged a 
school for clergymen into a modern 
liberal arts college. Today Columbia is 
undergoing a similar metamorphosis. 
Instead of providing pre-professional 
training for doctors and lawyers, it is 
becoming a breeding ground for a 
new elite: not of gentlemen, as in the 
past, but of political leaders, as well as 
the usual run of successful bankers, 
executives, and salesmen. With this 


61 





transformation, the demand for diver¬ 
sity in course work has reasserted it¬ 
self, and is stronger today than ever 
before. 

A few in the audience made points 
which we had not anticipated. Several 
speakers expressed dissatisfaction with 
the freshman program, albeit for dif¬ 
ferent and sometimes contradictory 
reasons. Some contended that the 
freshman year is not a satisfactory in¬ 
troduction to the new experience of 
college because it is not a sufficiently 
self-conscious denial of high-school 
conformism. No one told them, they 
complained, that they were expected 
to think for themselves instead of ac¬ 
cepting passively what the teacher 
expounded. And if the teacher did not 
exactly demand parrot-like responses, 
neither did he refuse to accept such 
responses on examinations or during 
class discussions. As a result, students 
found that they could pass their 
courses with the same techniques of 
absorption and regurgitation which 
they acquired in the secondary schools. 
The ease with which they accom¬ 
plished this discouraged them from 
aspiring to anything higher. 

Others, accustomed in high school 
to the Security of firm answers, found 
many of our fields of study incoherent 
and intellectually unsatisfactory, be¬ 
cause they fail to provide convincing 
explanations of phenomena or of their 
own methods. "All that I learned from 
sociology," one said to me, "is that 


there is no sociology." Columbia used 
to rejoice in exploding assumptions, 
but now some students are too earnest 
in their quest for faith to live with our 
old cult of doubt. 

Students also asked for more 
intellectual excitement in existing 
courses. I suggested at one point that 
their real reason for solving a physics 
problem should not be to get into 
med school or even to invent some¬ 
thing useful to humanity, but rather 
the spirit of play which prepares their 
minds for energetic and successful ef¬ 
forts later on. The students seemed 
pleasantly surprised at the thought of 
studying a subject for its own sake. 
The fact that they had lived at Colum¬ 
bia for substantial periods of time 
without encountering even the idea 
that the exercise of one's capacities 
can be enjoyable seems sad indeed. 

Ill 

One of our major frustrations has 
been the realization that each of our 
decisions depends on all the others if 
we are to shape a program which 
makes sense as a whole. 

Some of the proposals which have 
come before us have been singularly 
attractive. Others have implications 
which bother me even though the 
proposals themselves would obviously 
be beneficial. A few, equally interest¬ 
ing, bother me a great deal. 

Perhaps the most talked-about 


idea during the last year or two has 
come from Prof. Quentin Anderson. 
He has suggested that the staffs of Hu¬ 
manities A, CC A, and English A, total¬ 
ling about 120 people, be used in a 
more intensive freshman program 
than the present one. He would estab¬ 
lish a group of seminars, each nor¬ 
mally taught by an assistant professor 
and a graduate student. The pair 
would guide the freshmen through a 
close reading of an important text or 
two, and would supervise the plan¬ 
ning and writing of papers based on 
those texts. 

One of the most controversial fea¬ 
tures of the plan is that each seminar 
will count for ten points of academic 
credit. A freshman who chooses a par¬ 
ticular seminar and discovers after¬ 
wards that he doesn't like it will be 
unable to drop it without, in effect, 
dropping out of school for the semes¬ 
ter. Moreover, it may be difficult to 
obtain the necessary staffing. A pro¬ 
fessor who shares responsibility for a 
ten-credit course won't be teaching 
much else. Even assuming the profes¬ 
sor himself to be willing, his depart¬ 
ment may be loath to spend the 
money to replace him in other courses 
to which he would otherwise be as¬ 
signed. 

If it works, however, such an in¬ 
troduction to the kind of intellection 
expected of college students would 
counteract some of the expressionistic 
tendencies which one finds among to- 


To judge from the Course Guide, published by 
undergraduates, students aren't always as interested and 
attentive as they seem to be in this photograph of a 
CC classroom. 


Some charge that CC gallops through the centuries. 
A student can get writer's cramp trying to keep pace. 



62 



day's high school graduates. It would 
also help to disabuse them of the no¬ 
tion that books exist to be looked at 
and summarized rather than read, un¬ 
derstood, and incorporated into the 
whole of one's experience. 

Another exciting and well-publi¬ 
cized plan would establish an al¬ 
ternative to the present courses. Prof. 
Alan Westin has proposed that a group 
of half a dozen professors and junior 
faculty offer for a semester a joint pro¬ 
gram which would occupy all of a stu¬ 
dent's time. These teachers would 
work closely with 50 to 100 students 
for four full days a week, lecturing 
when appropriate, breaking up into 
small discussion groups, engaging in 
individual consultation on papers and 
projects and lunching together. The 
"Institute," as it is called, would oper¬ 
ate on an all-day basis for several 
weeks, then slow down for several 
weeks while students did research and 
wrote papers. During the latter period, 
professors would be available perhaps 
one day a week to consult with stu¬ 
dents and give occasional lectures, 
and the remainder of their time would 
be free for the research and commit¬ 
tee work which the University expects 
of them. No student would be re¬ 
quired to take an institute, or allowed 
to take too many. 

An institute satisfies the desire, to 
which I have alluded elsewhere, for 
communal study. It allows the student 
to concentrate all his efforts in one 
fairly broad field instead of shifting 
from Aeschylus to mesons as he moves 
from his ten to his eleven o'clock class. 
It also provides variation in the daily 
routine: from all-day classwork to in¬ 
tensive research as the semester pro¬ 
gresses. 

For some students, this system 
might work admirably. Still, the ad¬ 
ministrative problems involved in re¬ 
leasing faculty from other courses can 
be considerable, and the fate of a stu¬ 
dent who found in mid-semester that 
an institute was not for him would be 
worrisome indeed. Our committee 
will have to consider whether, and in 
what circumstances, the virtues of 
the institute would outweigh its dan¬ 
gers. 

An enterprising group of students 
has already launched an experiment of 
its own. This is the "Experimental Col¬ 
lege," which several members of our 
committee visited a few weeks ago. 
Technically, the College is a Barnard 
class, for which participants receive 
three points of academic credit. Ex¬ 
cept for this "course," the members 
take a regular Barnard or Columbia 


program. All, however, reside at a 
neighborhood hotel, where they plan 
and think through a pattern of com¬ 
munal life which will be as conducive 
as possible to learning. They hold 
meetings at which they try to organize 
their small society, and, at the same 
time, increase their awareness of their 
own and one another's problems. They 
also hold study sessions at which they 
grapple with some of the issues which 
the University confronts in a more aca¬ 
demic way. Their purpose is to find a 
cure for the isolation which, they be¬ 
lieve, separates a student's intellectual 
life from his social life and creates 
among many the impression that it is 
impossible to have both. 

A few weeks ago I went to Brown 
University and discussed with some of 
the faculty and students the educa¬ 
tional innovations which they intro¬ 
duced last fall. They abolished all gen¬ 
eral education requirements and pre¬ 
vented a rush by students towards the 
easiest sections by giving every stu¬ 
dent the option of receiving no grade 
in any or all of his courses. 

The response brought out some 
interesting contrasts. Seventy per cent 
of the freshmen requested no grades 
at all, compared with only 28 per cent 
of the upper-classmen. The general 
feeling at Brown was that a few stu¬ 
dents worked harder under the new 
system than under the old, and others 
—greater in number—worked less. But 
the principal effect of the change was 
to draw students to the best-taught 
courses, regardless of the field in 
which they were offered. 

It was clear to me that these 
changes, by virtue of their very nov¬ 
elty, had generated immense enthusi¬ 
asm among students and faculty. Such 
enthusiasm alone constitutes an argu¬ 
ment in their favor, regardless of their 
inherent soundness. A few years from 
now, when the novelty is gone, Brown 
may feel once again the need for a 
new and exciting experiment: say, for 
example, the reinstatement of grades 
and requirements. 

We have also considered new ad¬ 
ministrative machinery which would 
strengthen the College's position in 
the recruitment and retention of fac¬ 
ulty. One idea has been to establish 
several interdepartmental staffs which 
would not only direct programs such 
as CC and Humanities, but would 
supervise interdepartmental majors 
and sponsor other interdepartmental 
courses. These "interdepartments" 
would have greater resources as well 
as broader responsibilities than exist¬ 
ing interdepartmental bodies. The CC 


and Humanities chairmen, for ex¬ 
ample, have no budgets with which to 
hire faculty. Instead, they must de¬ 
pend for staff upon the various de¬ 
partments. Lacking money, they have 
no way of obtaining the men they 
want, but must accept the people the 
departments assign. The interdepart¬ 
ments, however, would have budgets 
of their own, and these budgets would 
give them considerable bargaining 
power in their dealings with depart¬ 
ment heads. Of course, such machin¬ 
ery could not be instituted without 
the approval of the central administra¬ 
tion. This would require that Low 
Library renew a commitment to gen¬ 
eral education which has been dimin¬ 
ishing in recent years. 

Many other proposals are in the 
air: new ways to arrange the math and 
science requirements; alternatives to 
the Humanities and Contemporary 
Civilization courses; changes in the 
university calendar or even the num¬ 
ber of years at College. We have much 
to learn, both about our own aca¬ 
demic community and about the ex¬ 
periences of other universities. Ulti¬ 
mately all 18 of us shall have to put 
our thoughts together, and then the 
real debate will begin, with the whole 
College participating. We hope that, 
out of all those hours, a tough, rich, 
and exciting program will emerge: one 
which will help the College to attract 
outstanding teachers, inspire out¬ 
standing students, and maintain its ex¬ 
cellence. 


FORTY WINKS: The course load 
is too burdensome, or the materials 
are boring, or maybe it was just a 
late night at the West End .... 



63 


DAVID BOGORAD 






Roar Lion Roar 


0 YG3.r in Sports Two ° f the brightest stars in the history of Columbia 

basketball, a total of four first-team All-Americans in 
by Alex Sachare '71 three sports, a pair of well-liked first-year coaches, six 

varsities with winning records (as compared with only 
three the year before) and a group of strong freshman squads highlighted 1969-70 in Columbia athletics. 

Closing the most successful chapter in Light Blue cage annals, seniors Jim McMillian and Heyward Dotson 
led the Lions to a 20-5 record and then headed their separate ways: McMillian signing a professional contract 
as the first draft choice of the Los Angeles Lakers of the N.B.A., and Dotson travelling to England for two years 
of study at Oxford under a Rhodes Scholarship. 

McMillian shattered Chet Forte's record for career scoring, setting the new standard at 1758 points and 
gaining All-American honors for his efforts. Three other Columbia athletes were named All-Americans: Len 
Renery became the first Lion soccer player everto gain the honor, and fencers Tony Kestler and Bruce Soriano 
brought to 33 the number of Lion swordsmen who have earned that distinction since 1950. 

In Ivy League competition, Columbia's fencing team defeated all five of its league opponents to win the 
Ivy crown for the 13th time in 15 years. At the season's end Columbia's maestro, Lou Bankuti, was named 
N.C.A.A. Fencing Coach of the Year. 

The fencers were the only Columbia team to win a league title. The basketball team finished second to 
Penn, and the tennis team ended its league schedule in a third place tie. 

Although his team lost eight of its nine contests, football coach Frank Navarro believes that his rebuilding 
program is making progress. As proof, he points to the improved spirit on the varsity in spite of a losing record, 
to the group of sophomores who gained valuable experience as starters in 1969, and to a large, talented 



64 






























































































freshman squad which is expected to 
send about 50 candidates to the vars¬ 
ity this fall. 

Overall, Columbia's varsity teams 
compiled a 71-96-3 record in 1969- 
70, for a .425 winning percentage (not 
counting ties). The freshman teams 
fared noticeably better, with a 57-52- 
3 record and a .523 percentage. 

There were a number of coach¬ 
ing changes during the year. Track 
and cross country coach Edgar "Dick" 
Mason retired after seventeen seasons 
at Columbia, during which he achieved 
prominence in Eastern track circles. 
In a special ceremony in late January, 
the Baker Field air dome which the 
cindermen use for their indoor meets 
was dedicated in his honor. Irving 
Kintisch, one of the outstanding field- 
event coaches in the country, was 
named to succeed Mason. 

Another new face at Columbia 
was that of George "Butch" See- 
wagen, Jr., who replaced Gerry Ehr¬ 
lich as tennis coach. The youthful 
Seewagen is the reigning U.S. Amateur 
tennis champion, and in his first sea¬ 
son at Columbia he guided the Lions 
to an 11-8 record, with a 10-3 mark 
against northern opponents. In ad¬ 
dition, he recruited a freshman squad 
which went undefeated. 

Late in May, soccer coach Joe 
Molder announced that he would 
leave Columbia over the summer to 
become assistant headmaster of the 
Westover School in Middlebury, 
Conn. Molder had been at Columbia 
since 1956, and was the pre-profes¬ 
sional adviser to students in the Col¬ 
lege. Jim Rein, his assistant for three 
of the past four years, was named act¬ 
ing soccer coach for the 1970 season. 

FOOTBALL 

After dropping their first eight 
games, the Lions upset Brown 18-3 in 
their finale. Coach Navarro never did 
find a quarterback of the caliber of 
Marty Domres, the ex-Lion star cur¬ 
rently with the San Diego Chargers of 
the A.F.L. Sophomores John Daurio, 
Jim Romanosky, and Bill Flynn were 
all tested at the position, with Flynn 
starting during the second half of the 
season. 

In the fall, Navarro will try at 
quarterback one of the most promis¬ 
ing members of last year's freshman 


squad. Don Jackson, from New York's 
Stuyvesant High School, led the Cubs 
to a 2-3-1 record, and impressed ob¬ 
servers with his passing, running, and 
field leadership. 

Navarro will build around a num¬ 
ber of solid veterans. Diminutive 
(5'7", 155 lbs.) fullback John Sefcik 
set an Ivy record for most carries and 
was the workhorse of the offensive 
backfield; linebackers Ray Ramsey 
and John Daurio, and halfback Robbie 
Wroe, bolstered a shaky defense; and 
center Mike Pyszczymucha and guards 
Mike Shane and Ben Fuller anchored 
a competent offensive line. 

Navarro is optimistic about the 
prospects for the coming season. 
"We're definitely making progress," 
he declared. "Even though the record 
wasn't very good, there was much 
better understanding between the 
coaches and the players. Now we 
need some outstanding victories, to 
prove to our kids that we can win 
here at Columbia." 


SOCCER 

Led by All-American halfback 
Len Renery, high scoring center Omar 
Chamma, steady defensemen Rocco 
Commisso and Mike Vorkas, and vet¬ 
eran goalie Doug Watt, the booters 
had their best season in modern his¬ 
tory, compiling an 8-3-1 record. But 
the Lions were only 3-3-1 in Ivy play, 
and were edged out of a berth in the 
N.C.A.A. tournament. 

In the fall, nearly all of last year's 
starters will be back. If acting coach 
Jim Rein can find a goalie to replace 
Watt, who graduated in June, the 
Lions could better their 8-3-1 mark of 
1969. 


LIGHTWEIGHT FOOTBALL 

Under coach Harvey Silver, Co¬ 
lumbia's lightweight football team 
won two of its six games, including 
a come-from-behind triumph over 
Princeton. The 2-4 record is the best 
Columbia has posted in over a dec¬ 
ade, and Silver is confident about im¬ 
proving on it this fall. 

With the aid of captains Jack Sur- 
gen and Rich Brooker, Silver built a 
team of over 40 players in 1969, and 
he expects to add to the number in 
the autumn. 


CROSS COUNTRY 

Sorely undermanned, the harriers 
lost all six of their meets in 1969. 
Junior Al Ugelow, who captained the 
squad last fall, was the team's top 
runner and will be back for another 
tour of duty as captain in 1970. 

BASKETBALL 

The year began well enough for 
Jack Rohan's cagers, who swept their 
first ten games. Highlights of the early 
season were a pair of wins in Madison 
Square Garden, over N.Y.U., 71-59, 
and Holy Cross, 92-68; an overtime 
decision against Fordham, 80-69; and 
a 76-58 defeat of Penn State, during 
which McMillian, the magnificent 6'5" 
forward, scored 44 points, falling only 
one shy of Chet Forte's school record 
of 45. 

The team travelled to Philadel¬ 
phia for the Quaker City Festival 
during Christmas week with an 8-0 
record, and came up with two of its 
better games. In the opening round 
of the tournament the Lions overran 
a strong Wake Forest team, 101-78, 
and in the semi-finals they outplayed 
Villanova, 76-64, with McMillian out¬ 
shining fellow All-American Howie 
Porter in a head-to-head battle. 

In the finals, however, McMillian 
was twice poked in the eye by La¬ 
Salle's Bobby Fields, and, with his vi¬ 
sion blurred, was useful only as a de¬ 
coy for most of the game. His team¬ 
mates failed to pick up the slack, and 
the Explorers pulled away in the final 
ten minutes to win, 89-74. 

Penn emerged as the Lion's prin¬ 
cipal rival in the race for the Ivy 
League championship. In their first 
showdown, in University Gym on Feb. 
2, the Quakers came out on top, 57- 
52, in a contest which could have gone 
either way. The home team dissipated 
an early advantage, and clung to a 
one-point margin at the half. Penn 
pulled away during the second period 
to take a 51-39 lead, but the Lions 
rallied for 13 straight points. Penn, 
however, kept its cool, sinking a bas¬ 
ket and four foul shots to clinch the 
ball game. Despite the loss, Columbia 
stayed in the race by winning its next 
six league outings, setting the stage 
for the Penn-Columbia rematch on 
the final weekend of the season. 

Penn's well-balanced squad 
jumped to a ten-point lead early in 


65 











the contest, to the delight of 9,000 
screaming fans in the Palestra. But the 
Lions rallied behind the shooting of 
McMillian, who scored 22 of their 
first 25 points. As they had done at 
University Gym, they carried a one- 
point lead into the locker room at 
halftime. 

But basketball games consist of 
two 20-minute periods, not just one, 
and McMillian couldn't carry the team 
alone. The second half belonged to 
Dick Harter's young Quakers, without 
a senior among their top eight men. 
The Penn defense collapsed around 
McMillian, and—as in the LaSalle con- 
test-his teammates failed to provide 
scoring support. Dotson, who was re¬ 
covering from a bad bout of flu (a 
fact he concealed, in order not to be 
accused of making alibis), turned in a 
disappointing performance on of¬ 
fense. At the other end of the court, 
Penn displayed a well-disciplined, 
balanced attack, and drew away to a 
71-57 decision. The following even¬ 


ing, the dispirited cagers, their title 
hopes dashed, bowed to Princeton, 
61-55. 

In the N.C.A.A. tournament, Penn 
was eliminated in the first round by 
Calvin Murphy's Niagara team. Co¬ 
lumbia tried to persuade its sister Ivy 
League schools to repeal the league 
ban on participation in the N.I.T., but 
failed when the Ivy presidents split 
four-to-four. 

Despite their second-place finish, 
the cagers compiled a commendable 
20-5 record, the third year in a row 
that they won at least 20 games. 

Although superstars McMillian 
and Dotson graduated in June, coach 
Rohan maintains that the outlook for 
the winter is encouraging. "We still 
have quite a few talented players," he 
told the audience at a post-season 
banquet in honor of the basketball 
team, "and if any team comes into to 
University Gym thinking it's going to 
have an easy time, I think that it'll be 
in for quite a surprise." 


FENCING 

Sabreman Bruce Soriano and 
foilsmen Tony Kestler and Mark Jaffe 
led the swordsmen to another cus¬ 
tomarily outstanding season. Despite 
increasingly stiff competition from 
N.Y.U., Army, Navy, Penn, Princeton 
and Harvard, coach Lou Bankuti's 
fencers won eight of ten dual meets, 
swept all five Ivy engagements, placed 
second to N.Y.U. in the nationals, and 
had two team members, Soriano and 
Kestler, selected as first-team All- 
Americans. 

Soriano enjoyed a nearly perfect 
season. He won 24 of 29 bouts in dual 
competition, then captured the gold 
medal in the Easterns and repeated his 
success at the nationals.. He became 
the twelfth Lion fencer to win an indi¬ 
vidual N.C.A.A. championship in 
twenty years. 

With six of nine regulars return¬ 
ing, and more help coming from a 
freshman team which swept nine of 
eleven matches, Bankuti should have 
another contender for the national 
title next winter. 

WRESTLING 

Although the varsity could man¬ 
age only a 3-8-1 record, coach Jerry 
Seckler's rebuilding program is going 
well. Seven of the ten starting posi¬ 
tions were held by sophomores last 
winter, each of whom should bene¬ 
fit from the varsity experience. 

The freshmen compiled a win¬ 
ning record, with Ernie Alieva and 
Bob Sacavage going through the dual 
meet season undefeated, and Jeff 
Badini placing first in the post-season 
Plebe tournament. And Seckler has 
apparently come up with a bumper 
crop of recruits for next year's frosh. 

INDOOR TRACK 

Thanks largely to the inflatable 
air dome which the track team uses 
as an indoor facility at Baker Field, 
the Lions won two indoor meets, the 
best they have done in quite some 
time. 

Most of their strength lay in the 
field events, with weight men Ron 
Furcht, Bruce Nagle, and Lou Lane, 
high jumpers Bill Reed and Jim Gor¬ 
man, and pole vaulters Ray Hesslwin 
and Andy Altman. 


CAREFULLY ON TIPTOE STEALING: Bruce Fogel reaches for 
the ball at University Gym. Opponent was Penn. 



66 








SWIMMING 

1969-70 was a dismal year for Co¬ 
lumbia's swimmers, who lost all four¬ 
teen of their meets. The two top per¬ 
formers were captain Bob Schliehauf 
and sprinter Homer Lane, a junior. 
Even Lane had a substandard season, 
failing to lower either of the two 
school sprint records which he set as 
a sophomore. 


BASEBALL 

The Lion nine finished with a 4- 
11 record, 3-10 in Eastern League play, 
losing nine of their last ten outings 
(including some forfeits because of 
the student strike). In a special cere¬ 
mony, the baseball diamond at Baker 
Field was named Andy Coakley Field, 
in honor of the long-time ex-coach. 

Star of the team was Frank Gor¬ 
don, a sophomore who pitched and 
played center field. Gordon, drafted 
by the New York Yankees when he 
graduated from high school, and 
scouted extensively by the pros dur¬ 
ing the season, batted .361 in league 
play. 


TENNIS 

Under rookie coach Butch See- 
wagen, the Lions posted an 11-8 rec¬ 
ord, their best mark since 1958. After 
winning only one of six meets against 
Southern opponents, the tennis team 
went 10-3 against northern rivals, and 
tied for third in the Eastern League 
with six wins and three losses. This 
was accomplished without a single 
senior, so the netmen should be even 
stronger next year. They will be bol¬ 
stered by candidates from a freshman 
team which went through its schedule 
undefeated. Bob Binns, Bobby Odasz, 
and Mark Massey are the most prom¬ 
ising of the cubs. 


GOLF 

With only one letterman, coach 
Pete Salzberg's golfers went through 
a 2-9 season. But the freshmen won 
four of their six matches, and should 
help the varsity next spring. 

(Top) HATS OFF: Doug Watt's helmet 
goes flying as he dashes for first. 

(Bottom) Tennis captain Larry Parsont 
volleys at Baker Field courts. 



67 


MANNY WARMAN 

















RUNNING SCARED: Miler Dwayne Dahl leads the pack against 
Princeton. He eventually finished second. 


WHERE'S JANE? Pole vaulter Ray Hesslwin 
soars into the skies above Baker Field. 


OUTDOOR TRACK 

The cindermen failed to win any 
of their outdoor meets, forfeiting a 
couple which they expected to win 
late in the season because of the 
strike. Ron Furcht, a junior, continued 
to develop as an outstanding weight 
man, scoring the Lions' only three 
points in the Heptagonal Games. 


CREW 

Both Columbia crews posted win¬ 
ning records this spring. Bill Stowe's 
heavyweights swept a pair of Florida 
regattas for the second year in a row, 
and then came north to win dual races 
against M.l.T. and Rutgers. However, 
they failed once again to qualify for 
the final round of the Eastern Sprints, 


and remain several rungs below Har¬ 
vard and Penn on the rowing ladder. 

The lightweights, directed by first- 
year coach John Abele, swept one tri¬ 
angular regatta and placed second in 
three others. They were seeded sixth 
for the Sprints, but voted to support 
the student strike by refusing to com¬ 
pete. 


Ron Furcht, Columbia's top discus thrower. 



DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: This hurdler's world seems to have 
turned upside-down. 



68 









BRINGING IN 
THE BRAWN 

For hundreds of sports-minded 
alumni and for Columbia's coaches, 
the days between April 18 and May 1 
were a critical period, as top high 
school student-athletes around the 
country decided whether to accept of¬ 
fers of admission to the Class of '74. 
Acceptance letters from the College 
Admissions Office went out on April 
18 only to one of every three appli¬ 
cants, and among that select group 
were many young men "recruited" by 
coaches with alumni assistance. 

A coach's time for recruiting is 
stretched thin because of the large 
number of prospects with whom he 
must communicate. But a local alum¬ 
nus can get to know the families of 
the best student-athletes in his com¬ 
munity, and visit the young men and 


their parents in the homes. 

These efforts by local alumni and 
the work of alumni recruiting groups 
in major metropolitan areas are co¬ 
ordinated on the campus by Peter 
Salzberg '64, assistant to Director of 
Athletics Ken Germann '43. With let¬ 
ters and phone calls to alumni all 
over the nation, Salzberg sets out to 
achieve three principal goals: to re¬ 
mind them that athletic recruiting is 
vital for Columbia, to advise them 
how to locate the most promising 
candidates in their area, and to help 
them persuade these prospects to 
choose Columbia. His office is a two- 
way valve which regulates the flow of 
information between the coaches and 
admissions office on one end, and in¬ 
terested alumni on the other. 

Recruiters and admissions officers 
do not always see eye to eye. "The 
coaches have done it again!" wrote 
one exasperated reader on the folder 
of a swimming prospect with low 
grades and board scores. But by and 


large, Columbia's talent scouts have 
chosen wisely. Of the 700 freshmen 
who are expected to register in the 
fall, approximately 140 Will be high 
quality athletes. The 70 football pros¬ 
pects include four of the finest high 
school players in the country: 200- 
pound line-backer Scott Denny of 
Menlo Park, Calif.; fleet halfback Evan 
Forde of Carol City, Fla.; fullback Rich 
Manfredi and lineman Mike Peluso, 
both from New Jersey. Track also is in 
good shape with Gordon Crail, a 14-6 
pole vaulter from Greenwood, Ind., 
sprinter and hurdler David Black of 
Security, Col., and Stan Ciemnicki, 
who hails from Linden, N. J. and has 
been clocked at 9.8 in the 100-yard 
dash. Six-foot, 11-inch Howard Miller 
of West Hempstead, N. Y. will be the 
tallest candidate for the freshman 
basketball team. Coaches of other 
sports also believe that they have done 
well. Next fall, the rest of the Colum¬ 
bia community will begin to find ouf 
if they're right. 



SUNRISE AT SPUYTEN DUYVIL: Light Blue oarsmen get ready for some 

early morning practice. 


DEDICATION 

Columbia's lightweight crew may 
never join the immortal ranks of 
Shakespeare's dark lady or Shelley's 
skylark, but the team does have four 
lines of poetry to call its own. Written 
by Pulitzer Prize poet Mark Van 
Doren, the poem is entitled "This 
Shell." It commemorates the crew's 
new racing boat, named in honor of 
the former Columbia professor: 


Weightless in water, swift as wind 
Subtle of purpose—a feather blown— 

I go with my oarsmen where they will, 
My beautiful body and theirs all one. 

Van Doren recited the poem at 
the April dedication of the eight- 
oared mahogany Italian Donoratico, 
which was a gift of former crew coach 
Norman Hildes Heim '60. Mrs. Van 
Doren performed the christening rites, 
pouring Harlem River water, taken 
from the finish line, over the bow, 


which bears her husband's name. One 
of the most distinguished and best¬ 
loved teachers in Columbia's history, 
Prof. Van Doren retired 11 years ago, 
after 39 years at the University. 

His namesake was put to its first 
test in a practice race immediately fol¬ 
lowing the ceremony at the Gould 
Boathouse. With the Muse on their 
side, Columbia's lightweights emerged 
appropriately victorious, three- 
quarters of a length ahead of their op¬ 
ponents from Trinity. 


69 




POWER POLITICS 

Although they broke no records 
this spring, the College's athletes 
shattered a cliche or two. 

It is a time-honored truism at Co¬ 
lumbia that all athletes are politically 
conservative. So fixed was this gen¬ 
eralization in the collective Columbia 
mind in 1968 that the students who 
organized to oppose the occupation 
of buildings were indiscriminately re¬ 
ferred to as "the jocks." (This rather 
inelegant slang term for athletes de¬ 
rives from "jockstrap.") 

Such facile characterizations are 
no longer possible. During May and 
June, many athletes withheld their 
muscle power in a show of support 
for the national student strike against 
America's presence in Cambodia. Co¬ 
lumbia teams cancelled a total of 14 
scheduled events during the month of 
May. The varsity golf team and both 
the varsity and frosh baseball teams 
called off all their remaining contests 
after the strike was declared; the track 
team cancelled a meet against Lafay¬ 
ette; and the freshman tennis players 
competed in only one of their last 
three matches. Only the varsity tennis 
team and the freshman golfers stuck 
to their schedules. 

Political concerns also affected the 
Light Blue turnout at multi-team play¬ 
offs, such as the Eastern golf tourna¬ 
ment, in which the Lion golfers re¬ 
fused to participate. The varsity and 
j.v. lightweight crews withdrew from 
the Eastern Sprints, leaving the fresh¬ 
man lightweight team and all three 
heavyweight teams to compete in the 
regatta (at which black oars, black 
headbands, and tee-shirts marked 
with clenched fists were much in evi¬ 
dence.) Participation in the Heptago- 
nal Games, an intercollegiate track 
competition, was left up to individual 
members of the track team. Those Ivy 
League trackmen who did compete, 
including the Columbia contingent, 
issued a joint statement declaring that 
"our sport is not, and must never be¬ 
come, a hideout from our basic re¬ 
sponsibilities as human beings" and 
deploring the war in Southeast Asia, 
the Kent State killings, and political 
and racial repression in this country. 
(As a result of the statement, the Army 
and Navy teams withdrew from the 


meet just 15 minutes before the first 
event.) 

Even the football players turned 
from the gridiron to the political 
arena, voting nearly unanimously to 
call off their one day of spring prac¬ 
tice on May 14, in order to "direct 
their effort in support of nationwide 
student strike demands." 

Whether an athlete wanted to 
compete or not was, of course, a 
highly individual matter, involving 
feelings of loyalty to the team as well 
as personal political convictions. If the 
performance of our athletes this spring 
holds any lesson for this campus, it is 
that the jocks are people, not stereo¬ 
types. 

ROAR, 

LIONESS, 

ROAR 

Columbia sports fans were urged 
on by lady cheerleaders this year, due 
largely to the efforts of a few persistent 
ladies. 

Traditionally, the cheerleading 
squad had been a male preserve. Last 
fall, however, Barnard junior Andrea 
Gutterman secured permission from 
Athletic Director Kenneth Germann to 
recruit a female cheering squad. It was 
decided that five Barnard girls, includ¬ 
ing Miss Gutterman, would join the 
ten Columbia men in leading sports 
spectators to higher decibels. 

Miss Gutterman placed an ad in 
the Barnard Bulletin, and about 20 
girls answered the call. At the second 
and final try-out, however, only five 
besides Miss Gutterman bothered to 
appear. As seemed politic, all were 
named to the squad. 

Miss Gutterman became captain. 
Sophomore Cheryl Lee Johnson, who 
joined the group to assure entry into 
games without depending on grue¬ 
some dates, drew the "X" in a lottery 
and became co-captain. When Andrea 
was injured in an auto accident, 
Cheryl assumed leadership. 

Miss Johnson, a pre-law student 
who describes herself as a "sports 
fetishist," relates with mingled regret 
and amusement that all did not go 
well. The football season was marked 
by various casualties: taped toes, 


ankles, and knees were not uncom¬ 
mon among the girls. Fortunately, in¬ 
juries declined during the basketball 
season. 

Conflicting philosophies of cheer¬ 
ing divided the squad. "We looked 
like Rockette rejects," complains Miss 
Johnson. "Each of us was doing her 
own thing." She believes that some of 
her team-mates were "burlesque" in 
style. Whenever she thought the other 
girls were becoming too carried away 
with "can-can" routines, she sat on 
the sidelines. ("They had a right to 
make asses of themselves, but I 
wouldn't help them.") Captain John¬ 
son hastens to add that the situation 
was better during the basketball sea¬ 
son than at football games, when the 
girls became confused and cheered 
"Push 'em back" while the Lions were 
on offense. Fortunately, the Lions 
were rarely on offense, so the error 
was not as conspicuous as it might 
have been. 

Cheerleader Elizabeth Riley, 
daughter of Howard Riley '29, is an 
Oriental Studies major whose trade¬ 
mark is a headband worn Indian-style. 
Miss Riley traces the differences in 
cheering techniques to geography. 
Eastern cheerleaders, she points out, 
cheer with their wrists, while Mid¬ 
western girls use their arms. The 
cheerleaders hail from a variety of 
states, and as a result there are four 
distinct ways of cheering "Let's Go 
Lions." Miss Riley admits that the girls 
had little time for practice sessions 
and were forced to look at each other 
during games to see which style was 
prevailing. 

Male cheerleader Lou Fischbein 
observes that the cheering atmosphere 
was "more relaxed" with girls around 
and the crowd "more stimulated." 
When he first heard that women were 
being recruited, he was afraid they 
would prove unattractive ("Barnard, 
after all"), but found them instead to 
be "quite good-looking." Fischbein 
also reports that most Columbia 
cheerleaders apparently grew fond 
enough of their female counterparts 
to be jealous. They were quite in¬ 
censed, according to Fischbein, when 
the girls danced with Harvard cheer¬ 
leaders during a basketball game at 
Cambridge. 

SPLIT-LEVEL CHEER: Liz Riley rises to new 
heights as she leads Columbia fans. 


70 













71 





THE HIGH COST 
OF PLAYING 

Athletics cost money, a lot of 
money. In recent inflationary years 
the expense of maintaining intercol¬ 
legiate teams has spiraled upward. 

Columbia Athletic Director Ken 
Germann '43 estimates that about 60 
per cent of his budget is spent on 
intercollegiate sports. The rest goes to 
College physical education and intra¬ 
mural programs. The exact amount of 
Columbia's athletic budget, like many 
departmental budgets, is confidential. 
The purpose of this closed-mouth 
policy is to prevent jealousy among 
departments. 

The athletic budget is an espe¬ 
cially sensitive subject. The reason 
appears to be a strong fear that inter¬ 
collegiate athletics will be one of the 
next targets of campus radicals. It 
might not be easy to explain the claims 
of football and golf over increased 
scholarships and improved academic 
and living facilities to leftist students 
and faculty who have notoriously lit¬ 
tle sympathy for "jocks" and spectacu¬ 
lars not of their own making. 

As it is, Columbia's sports budget 
is conservative as Ivy athletic budgets 
go. Ken Germann reports that Harvard, 
which spends about $1.9 million an¬ 
nually, has the biggest budget in the 
league. Brown, at about $700,000, is 
considered low man. Columbia, as¬ 
serts Germann, is somewhere in the 
lower middle on the budget pole. 

Even Harvard's budget would not 
be considered outrageous by the 
standards of the large non-Eastern 
conferences. Their philosophy, how¬ 
ever, differs from that of the Ivy 
League. The Southern and Western 
biggies believe that intercollegiate 
athletics should pay for themselves. 
Their sports departments often finance 
scholarships of athletes, and it is in¬ 
cumbent upon athletic directors to 
see that their stadiums are filled. 
Those sports which fail to bring in the 
crowds soon perish as intercollegiate 
activities. 

The Ivy schools, on the other 
hand, have long adhered to the tenet 
that intercollegiate sport is an inte¬ 
gral part of education, and that an 
athletic activity deserves to be sup¬ 


ported even if fans do not flock to 
the games or meets in huge paying 
numbers. The burden of this support, 
of course, falls on the University. 

Last year, Columbia took in about 
$275,000 at the box office. Yale's 
estimated income was $850,000; 
Brown's $200,000. Ivy League sports 
"deficits" were judged by The New 
York Times to range from $250,000 to 
$1 million, with Harvard having the 
largest. In some cases, however, these 
"deficits" included the cost of intra¬ 
mural athletics as well as many medi¬ 
cal expenses. 

It is impossible to pinpoint from 
the outside just how much money 
Columbia "loses" in intercollegiate 
sports. It seems likely, however, that 
this question will soon be widely and 
perhaps noisily raised. It is hardly 
surprising, therefore, that concerned 
administrators and athletic directors, 
at Columbia and elsewhere, are be¬ 
ginning to seek ways to curb the grow¬ 
ing costs of friendly competition. 

Ivy League presidents, disturbed 
if not frightened by the quantities of 
money their schools were losing on 
the playing fields, decided at their De¬ 
cember meeting to recommend that 
the Ivy athletic directors set guide¬ 
lines for trimming or at least stabiliz¬ 
ing their budgets. 

In April the sports directors con¬ 
ferred and agreed on certain measures 
which they hope will lop off the fat 
from their expenditures without dam¬ 
aging the meat of their programs. 
Most of the fat, they felt, lay in travel¬ 
ling expenses and cost of bed and 
board for teams during overnight 
stays. Except when a team is invited 
to a prestigious non-conference tour¬ 
nament, it must foot all its own ex¬ 
penses on the road. 

At the April meeting it was de¬ 
cided that money could be saved if 
both teams and sports were paired 
whenever possible. For example, it is 
already the policy of the Princeton 
and Columbia baseball squads to 
travel together to meet two other op¬ 
ponents. Next year it is planned to 
have the Lion and Tiger tennis teams 
travel with the batsmen. Columbia 
thus pays half the cost of hiring one 
bus instead of the full cost of two. 

The fencing and wrestling teams 
will also pair up next winter except 
when the freshmen and varsities in 


both sports are playing at the same 
time. The bus can only hold any com¬ 
bination of three of the four squads. 

The Ivy conference also decided 
to limit freshman and jayvee players 
to local engagements. Consequently, 
next fall Columbia freshman football¬ 
ers will not play Harvard or Brown 
because either contest would involve 
an overnight stay. 

A maximum number of games 
was established in all activities. In 
some sports Columbia customarily 
scheduled fewer contests than the 
new quota allows, while in others the 
Lions will have to curtail their sched¬ 
ule. Next winter the freshman basket¬ 
ball team will trim its season from 19 
games to 16. There will also be fewer 
freshman track, wrestling, and tennis 
matches, and fewer varsity swimming 
meets. 

There will, in addition, be new 
limits next year on the size of travel¬ 
ling squads, the number of players 
permitted to dress for home games, 
and the number of athletes allowed 
to attend pre-season football practice. 
One hundred men may be invited to 
pre-season drill if a college fields both 
a jayvee and varsity team; 75, if a 
school has only a varsity. This is ex¬ 
pected to work somewhat of a hard¬ 
ship upon Harvard, but will not affect 
Columbia, which considers itself lucky 
when 70 candidates show up for such 
sessions. 

Lastly, the conference resolved 
that each college should attempt to 
provide sleeping and eating facilities 
on its own campus for visiting Ivy 
squads. Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth 
and Harvard have already been able 
to offer beds to some visitors at $2 or 
$3 a night, which compares favorably 
to the $8 or $9 per person charged by 
motels. Although athletes undoubt¬ 
edly prefer the double-bedded luxury 
of orange and blue roadside inns, and 
the steaks of charcoal-broil restau¬ 
rants, they will find themselves, more 
and more, sleeping in upper bunks 
and eating campus cafeteria macaroni 
next year. 

Since Columbia has trouble 
enough trying to house its own under¬ 
graduates, new business manager Jim 
Farrell is seeking the motels which will 
offer the most reasonable group rates 
to visitors from distant schools. 

Despite all the pennypinching, 


72 






Athletic Director Germann relates that 
his 1970-71 budget is slightly higher 
than his 1969-70 budget, due to in¬ 
creased salaries for athletic personnel. 
The recent cutbacks may turn out to 
be but a finger in the dike protecting 
intercollegiate sports from oncoming 
waves of economic inflation and po¬ 
litical assault. 

AN ERA ENDS 

McMillian gets the ball in the 
corner . . . moves on Hummer . . . 
puts up a jump shot . . . good . . . 

Dotson with the ball at the top of 
the key . . . fakes left . . . drives down 
the lane . . . flips up a twisting lay-up 
. ..good... 

It will seem strange next winter 
to watch a Columbia basketball team 
take the floor without McMillian or 
Dotson. In their three varsity seasons, 
the Lions posted 63 victories against 
only 14 losses, with records of 23-5, 
20-4, and 20-5. Never before had a 
Columbia squad won 20 or more 
games in three successive years. 

James McMillian gained the re¬ 
spect and admiration of virtually 
everyone who knew him. As a token 
of their esteem, his classmates voted 
him "most worthy of distinction be¬ 
cause of scholarship, participation in 
student activities or pre-eminence in 
athletics." 

McMillian learned early in life the 
value of total commitment to a task. 
Born in Raeford, N.C., he moved to 
Brooklyn with his mother and younger 
brother while in eighth grade. He lived 
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and attended 
Thomas Jefferson H.S. 

It was there that he discovered 
that his basketball talents could open 
doors for him. By the time he grad¬ 
uated from Jefferson, his prowess on 
the court had brought scholarship of¬ 
fers from over 150 colleges. He chose 
Columbia because it met his two pri¬ 
orities: it would provide a good edu¬ 
cation, and still permit him to remain 
near his family. 

McMillian soon made the transi¬ 
tion from high school All-American to 
college All-American. Whether he is 
the greatest basketball player in Co¬ 
lumbia's history may be debatable, 
but his records speak for themselves: 
most points (1758) scored in a career; 
All-America, All-East, All Ivy and All- 
Met, 1968-70; the Haggerty Award as 



POWER DRIVE: Heyward Dotson shakes off Pennsylvania defender 
at the Palestra in Philadelphia. 




73 


MANNY WARMAN 




MANNY WARMAN MANNY WARMAN 




TAKE ONE GIANT STEP: Jim McMillian with the ball in second 
Penn game. McMillian carried Lion offense almost single-handed 
in unsuccessful effort. 


Trainer Ray Fullerston bends over Jim McMillian after Columbia star 
suffered eye injury against LaSalle. 


the top ball player in the metropolitan 
area, 1968-70 (the only athlete to be 
so recognized three times); and on 
and on. 

Rival coaches ably describe his 
talents. Joe Lapchick, ex-mentor at St. 
John's: "He has the stamp of great¬ 
ness, and could be New York City's 
greatest of all time." John Bach, ex- 
Fordham coach, now at Penn State: 
"He has the rare combination of being 
able to move quickly but effortlessly; 
of rebounding superbly but often un¬ 
noticed; of taking only the good shot, 
and often hitting it; of making the big 
play and doing it with such coolness 
that it belies his young age." 


He developed off the court as well 
as on it. A quiet, reserved young man 
at the time glory was first heaped upon 
him in his sophomore year, he handled 
the attention with a graceful aplomb 
which did justice to his title of All- 
American. Despite the pressures of 
being a public figure, he worked dili¬ 
gently at his studies, and graduated 
with a major in sociology. Remember¬ 
ing his roots, he worked one summer 
with New York City's Operation Sports 
Rescue, attempting to convince city 
youngsters that sports could provide 
a pathway to success. 

While McMillian was starring for 
Jefferson, Stuyvesant High School's 


basketball team was being paced by 
a 6'4" center named Heyward Dotson. 
Brought up in the middle class sur¬ 
roundings of Staten Island, Dotson 
spent over an hour each way travelling 
to Stuyvesant, a select institution in 
Manhattan, because it afforded him 
better academic opportunities than 
local schools. 

Dotson didn't draw the basketball 
scholarship offers which were thrust 
at McMillian, as there is not much de¬ 
mand for a 6'4" pivotman. He decided 
to attend Columbia not because it was 
one of the few schools to express in¬ 
terest in him as an athlete, but pri¬ 
marily because of its high academic 
standing. 

Dotson was converted from a cen¬ 
ter to a guard, and he amazed even 
his coaches with the way he adapted 
to the change. His ball handling and 
defense exceeded the highest hopes 
of coach Jack Rohan, and his experi¬ 
ence as a pivotman gave him a nat¬ 
ural advantage over other guards 
when he got near the basket. 

On the court, Dotson developed 
into an All-Ivy performer. He became 
the third leading scorer in Columbia 
history, netting a total of 1266 points. 
He set other career records with a 
.542 field goal shooting percentage, 
and a total of 237 assists. 

Dotson also distinguished himself 
off the court. An American history 
major, he took on a part-time job as 
a history teacher at Horace Mann H.S. 
He served as co-chairman of the Un¬ 
dergraduate Academic Affairs Com¬ 
mittee, and on Class Day was awarded 
an Alumni Prize as the senior judged 
by his classmates "most faithful and 
deserving." 

Now that they've graduated, Mc¬ 
Millian and Dotson will head in op¬ 
posite directions, at least for the time 
being. McMillian goes west to Los 
Angeles to play pro ball for the Lakers, 
who made him their first-round draft 
choice and signed him to a multi-year, 
six-figure contract. Dotson goes east 
across the Atlantic to Oxford, England, 
where he will spend two years of post¬ 
graduate study under the Rhodes 
Scholarship which he won last winter. 

So McMillian and Dotson are now 
names in the record book, like Forte 
and Farber, Felsingerand Budko, New- 
mark and Dwyer, Azary and Molinas. 
Gone, perhaps, but far from forgotten. 


74 




The Guard 
Changes 

There was a change in guard late 
last fall at the venerable Columbia 
University Press. Charles G. Proffitt 
'17, a member of the organization for 
42 years, stepped down as its Presi¬ 
dent and Director, and was succeeded 
by Robert G. Barnes '37, formerly of 
Doubleday and Company. Mr. Proffitt 
continued in the post of Chairman of 
the Board of Trustees, with the task of 
fund-raising. 

The Press, which is more than 
three-quarters of a century old, is one 
of the half-dozen largest of the eighty 
university presses in the United States. 
Nicholas Murray Butler—whose uncle 
had been the first head of the nation's 
first university press, at Johns Hop¬ 
kins-helped to establish a press on 
Morningside. But it was tough going at 
the beginning. In 1893, shortly after 
it was incorporated, the Press had no 
staff and no money. Toward the end 


of the following year, its ten trustees 
(all Columbia professors) found that 
they had spent $42.75 for postage and 
other small items. So nine of them 
contributed five dollars each from 
their own pockets — and Columbia 
University Press had a surplus of $2.25. 
Happily, President Low donated 
$10,000 shortly afterwards. The same 
year, it published its first book: Classi¬ 
cal Studies in Honour of Henry Drisler, 
which sold 198 copies in 1894, and re¬ 
mained in print until 1954. 

That was a far cry from last year's 
net sales of $2,250,000, and the present 
inventory of some 1,500,000 volumes 
in the warehouse. In 1969 the Press, 
with a staff of over 110 men and 
women, issued 92 hardcover books as 
well as four pamphlets and 16 inex¬ 
pensive paperback editions of titles 
it had published in the past. About 
15 per cent of its production is 
sold abroad. Over the years, C.U.P. 
books have been translated into 34 
foreign languages, some of the less 
familiar of which are Amheric, Cata¬ 


lan, Ewe, Fanti, Ga, Gujerati, Kanarese, 
Marathi, Peshtu, Punjabi, Tamil, 
Telugu and Twi. 

Why a university press?,Since 
many of the books which embody the 
results of a scholarly career only com¬ 
mand a small, specialized market, 
commercial publishers find them un¬ 
profitable and usually do not accept 
them. Thus, it becomes the responsi¬ 
bility of university presses to ensure 
that knowledge is disseminated and 
preserved. It is no wonder that in their 
less optimistic moments, those in 
charge of university presses wryly in¬ 
voke the specter of bankruptcy. And 
yet, through good judgment arid 
generous support, this arm of scholar¬ 
ship has achieved a vital and strong 
position in American publishing. Al¬ 
though university presses received 
only one per cent of the publishing 
dollar in 1968, for instance, they pub¬ 
lished eight per cent of all the non¬ 
fiction issued in this country that year. 

Today, under an enlarged con¬ 
cept of its purposes, Columbia Unjver- 


75 

































































TOWER OF BABEL: University Press books in translation. 


(Bottom) Retiring President Charles C. 
Proffitt. 


THE OLD ORDER PASSETH: (Top) New 
University Press president Robert C. Barnes. 


sity Press also produces educational 
films in its Center For Mass Communi¬ 
cation. C.M.C. films have won more 
than three dozen major awards, in¬ 
cluding prizes from ten international 
film festivals abroad and five awards 
from American sources. The Press is 
presently in the process of establish¬ 
ing a unit to publish music, which will 
serve musicians as its other facilities 
serve writers of scholarly books. 

About a third of the Press authors 
are members of the Columbia faculty. 
The rest, for the most part, come from 
campuses elsewhere. Authors include 
four Presidents of the United States, 
three Chief Justices of the Supreme 
Court, and numerous Nobel Prize 
winners. 

The editors are especially proud 
of certain books which have had par¬ 
ticular impact upon world politics or 
within scholarly fields. These include 
Emile Benoit's Europe at Sixes and 
Sevens, which predicted DeGaulle's 
veto of Britain's bid for membership 
in the Common Market a year-and-a- 
half before it occurred, and Quantum 
Electronics, edited by Charles Townes, 


which described the amplification 
forces known as the Laser and the 
Maser at a time when they were virtu¬ 
ally unknown. The State Department 
has used the introduction to Charles 
Wagley's Latin American Tradition 
to train its foreign service officers. And 
when Soviet Russia began quietly to 
omit strategic towns from its maps— 
thereby creating "non-places" in the 
same manner that it has made "non¬ 
persons" — Theodore Shabad pub¬ 
lished, in 1951, his Geography of the 
U.S.S.R., with maps which rescued 
these non-places from oblivion. 

Unlike most university presses, 
which are sometimes treated as aca¬ 
demic departments of the universities 
they serve, C.U.P. is not a unit of 
Columbia, but is financially and legally 
independent. Nonetheless, it main¬ 
tains a close association with the 
school through its authors, its publi¬ 
cation committee, and its Board of 
Trustees. According to its by-laws, six 
of the ten trustees must be nominated 
by the President of Columbia Univer¬ 
sity. The University also provides the 
Press with office space near the 


campus and limited grants for certain 
publications. Otherwise, the Press de¬ 
rives its income from sales, bequests, 
and gifts from individuals and various 
organizations. Recently it has started 
to raise an endowment, named in 
honor of former Acting President of 
Columbia Frank D. Fackenthal '06 and 
sponsored by the Society of Older 
Graduates. Gifts to date amount to 
slightly more than $22,000. 

The Press has a London office 
(shared with Yale University Press 
and McGill-Queens University Press) 
which handles distribution in Great 
Britain, continental Europe, Asia Minor 
and Africa. Distribution in Asia and 
Latin America is done by a book ex¬ 
porting firm; in Canada, by McGill- 
Queen's. 

Under the leadership of alumnus 
Barnes and fellow-alumnus Henry H. 
Wiggins '32, who has been with the 
organization for 35 years and now 
serves as Assistant Director, the Press 
will continue to function as a conduit 
for bringing scholarly knowledge to 
the world. 


76 












Hope on the 
Bowery 

Three years ago, the paddy wagon 
was a familiar sight to the homeless 
denizens of the Bowery in New York 
City. Twice daily, it swung along the 
broad thoroughfare which was once 
the principal highway of old New 
Amsterdam, rounding up derelicts 
from doorways and curbsides. For 
most of its passengers, arrest was 
merely the first station of an often- 
repeated Calvary which led from the 
police van to the station house to 
magistrate's court to prison for a ten¬ 
or fifteen-day period—and finally back 
to the streets again, where the vicious 
circle began anew. 

"The police were under pressure 
from the community to 'get the bums 
off the streets,'" explains Robert Gold- 
feld '61, "and there was no alternative 
to making arrests. We set out to pro¬ 
vide an alternative." 

"We" is the nine-year-old Vera 
Institute of Justice, a private agency 
which is funded by the Ford Founda¬ 
tion. In the spring of 1966, two federal 
courts had held that the imprisonment 
of alcoholics is unconstitutional, and 
it appeared that the Supreme Court 
would shortly do likewise. Concerned 
city officials, headed by Mayor John 
V. Lindsay, decided to prepare for the 
day when it would no longer be pos¬ 
sible to "dry out" derelicts in the jails. 
Vera was asked to study the problem. 
The result was the Manhattan Bowery 
Project, which in two-and-a-half years 
has managed to reduce dramatically 
the number of arrests for public in¬ 
toxication and related offenses, there¬ 
by freeing the courts for more press¬ 
ing duties while simultaneously 
providing better facilities for detoxi¬ 
fication and eventual rehabilitation 
than are normally available in prison. 
In the summer of 1968, Goldfeld re¬ 
signed from his position with a Wall 
Street law firm and joined the Project 
as its administrative director. 

The Project is directed not by 
Vera, but by the Manhattan Bowery 
Corporation, which Vera organized 
for the purpose Of establishing and 
supervising the program. Headquar¬ 
ters are located in the New York City 
Men's Shelter, an ancient six-story 
building just east of the Bowery. From 


nine a.m. until nine p.m., two-man 
teams consisting of a plainclothes 
policeman and a civilian rescue aide 
who is himself a reformed alcoholic 
cruise past the bars and flop-houses 
of Skid Row in unmarked police cars. 
When they see a derelict who is in 
"public distress"—that is, who is so 
obviously intoxicated that he would 
be vulnerable to arrest—the civilian 
member of the team steps out and in¬ 
vites him to come to the Shelter. If 
the derelict refuses, the rescue team 
simply moves on. If he accepts—and 
Goldfeld estimates that more than 
two-thirds do—he is brought back to 
the Shelter for a five-day program of 
detoxification which, at the very least, 
will cleanse his system of life-threat¬ 


ening toxins, and may in some cases 
lead to a more or less permanent cure. 

The principal facility of the Proj¬ 
ect is a 48-bed hospital on the fourth 
floor of the Shelter, where approxi¬ 
mately 60 men are treated every week. 
After a preliminary screening followed 
by a physical examination, a shower, 
and delousing, the alcoholic is placed 
in an "acute ward" for three days. 
There he is kept under 24-hour medi¬ 
cal supervision and treated with drugs 
and therapy to ease withdrawal symp¬ 
toms. Delirium tremens, the agonizing 
and sometimes fatal product of with¬ 
drawal, are rarely a serious problem 
when there is proper care. "The movie 
Days of Wine and Roses created a 
myth," scoffs Goldfeld. Of the more 


RESCUE OPERATION: Bowery Project aide bends over 
sleeping derelict. 



77 


WARREN JORGENSEN 









than 2,000 alcoholics who have passed 
through the hospital, only about half 
a dozen have become so unmanage¬ 
able that they had to be restrained. 

On the third day, the patient is 
transferred to the recuperative ward, 
where recreation facilities are avail¬ 
able. Perhaps the most important part 
of this phase of the treatment is the 
interview with the caseworker, who 
tries to arrange for jobs and aftercare 
once the five-day period has ended. 
Approximately sixty per cent accept 
referral to some other rehabilitative 
facility, usually the psychiatric or re¬ 
habilitation unit of a state hospital. 
In any event, all but the most acute 
cases must leave the Shelter after five 
days, to make room for others. Com¬ 
mitment is voluntary at every stage: 
the patient may walk out at any time 
he wishes. 

In addition, the Project sponsors 
two important auxiliary services. One 
is an out-patient clinic, which provides 
aftercare for detoxified alcoholics who 
have been discharged from the hospi¬ 
tal and are unable or unwilling to re¬ 
ceive further institutional treatment 
elsewhere. The clinic is staffed by two 
nurses and two social workers who 
dispense, under a doctor's prescrip¬ 
tion, vitamins, tranquilizers, and anta- 
buse, a drug which induces a violent 
physical reaction to alcohol, and 
thereby inhibits drinking. Goldfeld es¬ 
timates that fifteen per cent of the 
Hospital patients remain in touch with 
the clinic after release. 

The Men's Shelter includes a pub¬ 
lic room where alcoholics can come 
in to sleep or get warm. In the early 
days of the program, Project officials 
offered occupants free medical treat¬ 
ment. According to Goldfeld, 150 
were found to have serious untreated 
medifcal problems. One reason for the 
high incidence of undiscovered illness 
is that alcoholics who go to regular 
hospitals with physical complaints of 
any kind are often told simply to go 
home and sleep it off. The Vera In¬ 
stitute reported the results to nearby 
St. Vincent's Hospital, which re¬ 
sponded by opening an emergency 
clinic on the first floor of the Shelter 
where alcoholics can obtain treatment 
for other ailments. 

These combined services have 
been so successful that police have 
put a halt to the twice-daily round¬ 


ups which were once part of the 
Bowery routine. Arrests in the area 
for alcohol-related offenses have 
fallen off from 2,718 during the last 
nine months of 1968 to 530 during the 
equivalent period in 1969. 

Another result, according to 
Goldfeld, has been to dispel the myth 
that alcoholics don't want to be 
helped. One of the first problems 
which the Project faced was whether 
care should be voluntary or compul¬ 
sory. Officials opted for the former, 
partly because of legal difficulties in¬ 
volved in involuntary commitment, 
partly because patients brought in 
against their will are likely to prove 
resistant to treatment. Today they feel 
vindicated. "We've proved," Goldfeld 
declares, "that if you want to get these 
guys off the street, you don't need 
coercion to do it. All that is necessary 
are proper facilities." 

Goldfeld concedes, however, that 
the Project has not been able to solve 
the problem of recidivism. Of the 
2387 men who were admitted to the 
hospital during its first year of opera¬ 
tion, nearly forty per cent had been 
there before, and ten per cent had re¬ 
turned at least four times. "Five days 
of detoxification won't cure a man 
who's been drinking for 20 years," 
points out Goldfeld. "The perman¬ 
ence of the cure depends on the qual¬ 
ity of the aftercare." All that the Proj¬ 
ect can do, he explains, is take care of 
the alcoholic's immediate problems, 
possibly save his life, and give him the 
opportunity to go elsewhere for ex¬ 
tended treatment. "What we really 
need," he argues, "are facilities for 
long-term care in a controlled en¬ 
vironment." He looks forward to the 
establishment of "halfway houses," 
similar to those which are presently 
available for some narcotics addicts, 
where, in his words, "you can struc¬ 
ture the patients' lives." 

What makes a successful young 
Wall Street lawyer leave corporate 
practice to work with alcoholics? "I 
got tired of intellectual puzzles," 
answers Goldfeld. "In a law firm, you 
deal with problems which are struc¬ 
tured by somebody else. I wanted to 
make things happen." 

What Goldfeld has made happen 
has brought new hope to the 6,000 
derelicts who throng the dives and 
alleyways of the ancient Bowery. 


Grinding Wheels 

"The Alumni Association? But 
what does it do?" 

This is the question which is often 
asked by perplexed alumni, who are 
bombarded annually with a multiplic¬ 
ity of fund-raising appeals from a 
seemingly infinite number of College- 
or University-related sources. 

Responds Executive Director Max 
J. Lovell '23: "Plenty." 

From his offices on the fourth 
floor of Ferris Booth Hall, Lovell super¬ 
vises a busy operation whose many- 
faceted activities are all directed 
toward a single ultimate objective. 
This, says Lovell, is "to restore the 
College to its proper eminence in the 
University scheme of things." 

Perhaps the proudest accomplish¬ 
ment of the Association during the 
past year has been the publication of 
a comprehensive 120-page report en¬ 
titled "Columbia College Tomorrow." 
The report, which grew out of a study 
triggered by the student disorders of 
1968, is the work of a special com¬ 
mittee headed by Victor Futter '39. 
Its recommendations cover a wide 
range of issues: student housing (it 
calls for reconstruction and modern¬ 
ization of residence halls and the es¬ 
tablishment of coeducational living 
facilities); student power (it urges that 
students be given an influential role 
in decision-making); administrative 
structure (it argues that students and 
faculty ought to be able to elect cer¬ 
tain members of the Board of Trus¬ 
tees); and faculty and administrative 
salaries (which, say the authors, 
should be "slightly higher than those 
paid at the best of our peer institu¬ 
tions" because of the greater cost of 
living in New York City). To meet stu¬ 
dent demands for "relevance" in 
courses, the report advocates a com¬ 
pulsory "dialogues program" for 
freshmen, in which students would 
meet in groups of twenty under the 
guidance of two teachers, two alumni, 
and one administrator, to study topics 
which they would select themselves. 

The report was released on March 
9, 1970. It received prominent cover¬ 
age in that morning's edition of The 
New York Times. 

Among its other projects, the As¬ 
sociation has established a series of 
joint student-alumni committees and 


78 






Alumni Association Director Max Lovell at his desk in Ferris Booth Hall. 


sub-committees to study such subjects 
as faculty-student relations, minority 
student concerns, and undergraduate 
housing. There is, moreover, a "Cur¬ 
rent Campus Conditions Committee," 
described by Lovell as "a catch-all 
committee which is on tap for any on- 
campus question or emergency not 
within the purview of the other 
groups." The Association has also 
been seeking representation on two 
College Committees: the Planning 
Committee and the Student Advisory 
Council. Its efforts in this area have 
so far proved unsuccessful. However, 
says Lovell, "we keep punching away 
at it when we can." 

Some of its most effective work in 
the field of student relations has in¬ 
volved unheralded but significant aid 
to assorted extracurricular programs. 
For example, it has helped to obtain 
funds for emerging groups such as the 
hockey and filmmakers clubs. Nor has 
it neglected the more established 


activities. When the Board of Manag¬ 
ers held a dinner to award the Mark 
Van Doren Prize, the Association 
made a special mailing to New York 
alumni, soliciting their attendance. It 
also sent out circulars to Brooklyn 
alumni, advertising a band concert in 
that borough. 

The Association, which has long 
taken an interest in campus housing 
conditions, is credited with helping to 
bring about the redecoration of the 
dormitories and the creation of 
lounges on each floor. These were 
among the recommendations in a 
joint report to the President by the 
Association and the Undergraduate 
Dormitory Council in the spring of 
1969. 

Lovell, who not only coordinates 
these activities but supervises, in 
addition, the administrative busy- 
work of the Association—dues collec¬ 
tion, sponsorship of class functions, 


circulation of class newsletters—never¬ 
theless finds time to edit and distrib¬ 
ute a newsletter which keeps alumni 
abreast of recent campus develop¬ 
ments. 

He is the first to recognize that 
the Association is still a long way from 
attaining its principal goal. "We 
started out as a College and remained 
one until the turn of the century," he 
explains. "The University began with 
Butler and became, ultimately, the 
prime consideration to the derogation 
of the College. We want a system like 
the one at Yale, where the college is 
the chief school around which the 
rest of the university revolves." 

The task may take a while to ac¬ 
complish. The former Wall Street 
lawyer, however, is addressing him¬ 
self to it with his customary energy 
and resolution. On the fourth floor 
of Ferris Booth Hall, the wheels grind 
slowly but exceedingly fine. 


79 












Young Turks 
of 

Manhattan... 

A handful of young graduates 
who began their political careers as 
strong team swimmers for McCarthy 
in the good old "Dump Johnson" days 
have now emerged as the youngest 
Democratic district leaders in New 
York history. 

Columbia proved the ideal diving 
board for these political aquatics, who 
swim only toward the left. The sea of 
reform Democratic clubs on Man¬ 
hattan's upper west side made it easy 
for them to plunge into political 
waters while they were still under¬ 
graduates. Attaining positions of 
leadership was not so easy. 

The present group of Columbia 
degree-holding district leaders con¬ 
sists of Simon Barsky '68, Jerrold 
Nadler '69, and slightly older Frank 
Barraff '65 who was elected to his 
leadership at the age of 22 and is also 
Press Secretary to Manhattan Borough 
President Percy Sutton. Joel Berger '65, 
an attorney for Legal Aid, is a recently 
retired district leader, and Richard 
Morris '67 is the generally acknowl¬ 
edged mastermind of the young re¬ 
former maneuvers and campaigns on 
the west side. 

Waving the new reform banner 
on the east side is Mark Siegel '65, 
vice-chairman of Manhattan's New 
Democratic Coalition (an association 
of reform clubs and citizens' groups) 
and the aspirant for the Democratic 
and Liberal party nominations for state 
senator. If he wins the seat, he will 
represent the east side area which runs 
from 4th to 93 rd Street. 

Morningside and the adjacent 
west side areas have been cluttered 
with reform clubs since the Eleanor 
Roosevelt- Herbert Lehman - inspired 
revolt against Tammany Hall in the 
mid-fifties. Columbia's young Turks, 
however, believed that the old reform 
leadership had gone stale, and that 
many older Democratic leaders who 
were labeled "reformers" were too 
self-serving to pay attention to com¬ 
munity needs, 


Barsky, Nadler, and Morris all 
came to Columbia from Stuyvesant 
High School intending to become in¬ 
volved in local politics. Once arrived, 
they concluded that the existing re¬ 
form clubs were doing little to better 
the lot of their constituents. They, to¬ 
gether with other Columbia and Bar¬ 
nard students and community resi¬ 
dents, initiated such grass roots 
projects as tenant associations to 
fight malevolent or negligent land¬ 
lords (among them, Columbia), block 
associations to attack problems of 
housing, sanitation, and safety, and 
draft counselling services. 

Their extensive community work 
plus their volunteer efforts in the 
Eugene McCarthy and Paul O'Dwyer 
campaigns won them local as well as 
some state and national recognition. 
In the spring of 1969, the youngest re¬ 
formers decided to put their local 
strength to the test. Usually a Demo¬ 
cratic club's endorsement for district 
leader is tantamount to election. By 
drawing old McCarthy supporters into 
his district organization, the Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson 
Club, Nadler captured the nomina¬ 
tion. 

The older reformers refused to 
accept the decision and put their own 
candidate in the June primary. Al¬ 
though Nadler's opponent was sup¬ 
ported by the Congressman, state 
senator, assemblyman, and city 
councilman from the district, the 
young alumnus swept the primary and 
became district leader. Jerry attributes 
his victory to his grass roots efforts 
which brought new voters to the pri¬ 
mary. 

In a neighboring district, Morris 
and Barsky worked almost 24 hours a 
day to set up a new political club, 
Community Free Democrats. The club 
entered its own slate of candidates, in¬ 
cluding Barsky, in the primary against 
the candidates of the old reform or¬ 
ganization, the West Side Democrats. 
Barsky and his allies triumphed, and 
the West Side Democratic Club died. 

The newest reformers believe they 
are as radical as they can be without 
renouncing the system. They favor a 
liveable guaranteed minimum income, 
increased government spending for 
cities and education, vastly extended 


addict rehabilitation centers, inexpen¬ 
sive legal abortion, and a complete 
overhauling of the courts. They are 
against the Vietnam war and harrass- 
ment or prosecution of dissenters. 

Dedicated to local group action, 
they nevertheless abhor violence, 
while understanding the frustrations 
which motivate the revolutionaries. 
They did not occupy buildings in 
spring '68 but sympathized with the 
rebels and were horrified by Col¬ 
umbia's decision to summon the 
police. 

All insist that their personal am¬ 
bitions are subordinate to their com¬ 
mitment to governmental reform, and 
maintain that the two are entirely 
compatible. District leaderships carry 
no salary and, according to ex-leader 
Joel Berger, "There isn't any graft 
around even if you want it." Barsky 
works as a junior high school teacher 
while attending law school in the 
evenings. Nadler is a legal assistant for 
the Corporation Trust Company, and 
Morris works for the non-partisan 
Citizens Budget Committee. Each says 
he is ready to run for public office or 
accept a reform administrative ap¬ 
pointment as the opportunity arises. 

One of them quipped that the 
rooms in which they meet to discuss 
political strategy are more likely to be 
filled with the scent of marijuana than 
with the aroma of cigars. Mostly, how¬ 
ever, these new style politicians don't 
smoke anything. They jokingly called 
themselves the "chocolate milk and 
cookie contingent" at a reception 
given by John Lindsay to solicit reform 
Democratic support in his last mayor¬ 
alty campaign. They could afford to 
chuckle, having just won their pri¬ 
maries while the Mayor lost his. Most 
of the young reformers backed Eugene 
Nickerson in his aborted bid for the 
governorship, while the old reformers 
seemed to line up with the regulars in 
support of Arthur Goldberg. 

The veterans from '65, Barraff and 
Berger, refer to the new district 
leaders as the "kids." A small genera¬ 
tion gap exists in tone although both 
groups concur on most issues. The 
kids seek the advice of their elders, 
and the latter are frankly impressed by 
their junior partners in political cru¬ 
sade. 


80 







... and 
Trudeau of 
the Bronx 

Reform also blooms in the Bronx, 
and for the first time has penetrated 
Borough Hall. Robert Abrams '60 be¬ 
came Borough President in November 
1969 without the blessing of the regu¬ 
lar Democratic party. His press secre¬ 
tary, Ethan Geto '65, has worked with 
reform officials and legislators since 
his undergraduate days, and was an 
unsuccessful reform candidate for a 
state assemblyman's nomination in the 
Bronx Democratic primary of 1968. 

Abrams and Geto don't have any 
youngsters with whom to get chummy. 
Geto at 26 is an elder statesman. 
Abrams at 30 is practically ancient. 
But to the regular party in the Bronx 
they're both upstarts. Although the 
upstarts are likely to agree with Man¬ 
hattan's young reformers on most 
points there is little personal contact 
between them. 

Abrams never had an old reform 
house to clean. Instead, he used his 
political broom against the old line 
unreformed Bronx Democrats. Spon¬ 
sored by the relatively weak Bronx- 
Pelham Reform Democratic Club, he 
was 27 when he won a primary battle 
against a machine politician for nomi¬ 
nation to the State Assembly. In the 
Bronx the Democratic nomination 
ends the game. His successful 1969 
primary bid brought him the Borough 
Presidency, much to the chagrin of the 
regulars. 

Bob attributes his success to his 
reform platform and his strenuous 
campaigning efforts. He was at sub¬ 
way stations at 6:30 a.m. to bid voters 
good morning and back at 5 p.m. to 
say good night. In between he pa¬ 
trolled shopping centers with out¬ 
stretched hand, and in the evening he 
addressed kaffee klatches and meet¬ 
ings of every conceivable description. 

Now, safely in office, he worries 
about building up the Bronx reform 
movement, paying off his campaign 
debts ("I didn't get a cent from the 
party"), and getting City Hall to re¬ 
member that the Bronx exists. 



WHO OWNS NEW YORK? Frank Barraff, press secretary to 
Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, pictured here 
with his district co-leader. 


AND WHO OWNS THE BRONX? Bronx Borough President 
Robert Abrams and press secretary Ethan Geto, 
both Columbia alumni. 



81 


PARKWAY STUDIOS 








His associates worry about his 
being single, and so, apparently, does 
every Jewish mother and grandmother 
in the borough. He is the Trudeau of 
the Bronx. As a 30-year-old Jewish 
bachelor and big politician he is at 
once a heretic and the most desirable 
male within a 15-mile radius of the 
Grand Concourse. 

Ladies sidle up to him on the 
street to tell him of their eligible 
granddaughters and nieces. He is ac¬ 
customed to receiving letters like the 
one signed by a real Mrs. Portnoy, 
which began: "My daughter doesn't 
know I'm writing this ..." His political 
foes took an ad in the Daily News dur¬ 
ing his last campaign in which they 
claimed that a bachelor couldn't pos¬ 
sibly understand the problems of 
families in the Bronx. 

His aides' objections to Bob's 
bachelorhood are practical rather than 
moral. They simply don't like keeping 
up with Abrams' 18-hour political day. 
A wife might keep him at home. 

Abrams isn't opposed to getting 
married. He just has trouble finding 
the right girl between political en¬ 
gagements. He does not date daugh¬ 
ters of the Bronx, in order to avoid 
doorstep entanglements. 

The genesis of Ethan Geto's career 
more nearly resembles that of his 
Manhattan counterparts. He was al¬ 
ready a political animal when he en¬ 
tered Columbia. However, he took 
one look at the reform-minded under¬ 
graduates who were descending in 
multitudes upon the local west side 
clubs and boarded the subway back to 
the Bronx. He remained an active vol¬ 
unteer in reform Bronx politics 
throughout his college days, and after 
a few short research stints graduated 
to become Assistant to the then Com¬ 
missioner of Buildings, Charles Moed- 
ler. He went on to various other posi¬ 
tions, including Assistant to Congress¬ 
man James Scheuer, before joining 
Abrams' staff. 

Geto insists that all the Columbia 
political reformers in the Bronx and 
Manhattan have the same goal. "I'd 
like to be Mayor someday," he de¬ 
clares, "and even if they won't admit 
it that's what the rest of them want 
too." 


Fund-Fair 

As the 18th Annual College Fund 
drive draws to a close, it is becoming 
apparent that total contributions will 
fall below the million mark for the 
first time in recent years. In mid-June, 
with a week of solicitation remaining, 
the drive had collected slightly less 
than $700,000 in gifts and pledges. Ex¬ 
ecutive Director Alfred J. Barabas '36 
predicts that intensive campaigning 
during the last few days will raise the 
figure to $800,000. Others, less hope¬ 
ful, indicate that $700,000 is more 
realistic. 

Thus, the proceeds of the Fund 
continue to plummet in a downward 
spiral which began six years ago. Gifts 
have dropped steadily, from $1,275,- 
000 during the Thirteenth Fund to 
$1,022,000 last year. The percentage 
of contributing alumni has also de¬ 
clined, from a peak of 40 per cent 
in 1964 to a nadir of 20 during the last 
two campaigns. The only increase 
over last year has been in unrestricted 
donations, which already total $450,- 
000. This too, however, is considerably 
less than the h.alf a million dollars re¬ 
ceived in 1968. 

The present drive, moreover, has 
already been extended twice past its 
original deadline of April 30. Some 
alumni argue that any moneys col¬ 
lected during the grace period are 
actually being taken away from next 
year's Fund. "It's a classic case of rob¬ 
bing Peter to pay Paul," complained 
one. Barabas, in rebuttal, points out 
that previous drives had always run 
until June. "We'd hoped we could 
wrap this one up sooner," he said. 
"But it was no surprise for us to dis¬ 
cover that we needed more time." 

Among the schemes which fizzled 
was a plan to raise $100,000 from 
selected alumni in matching gifts. The 
project stalled before even a third of 
the necessary sum had been pledged. 

The Fund, of course, provides 
nearly a quarter of the scholarship 
money for the College, and it is feared 
that one result of the diminished flow 
will be a decrease in financial aid. Last 
year, Dean of the College Carl F. 
Hovde issued, for the first time, a re¬ 
port to College alumni describing how 
Fund contributions are used. In it, he 
acknowledged that the College was 
forced because of money shortages to 


deny assistance to 35 applicants ad¬ 
mitted in the spring of 1969. If the 
squeeze becomes worse, a few pre¬ 
dict, it may also become necessary to 
tighten up on aid allocated to students 
already here. 

The decline in contributions is at¬ 
tributable to several factors, no one of 
which can be singled out as the prin¬ 
cipal villain. The University Capital 
Gifts Campaign has doubtless si¬ 
phoned off donations which would 
otherwise have gone to the College. 
Last year, in fact, Fund officials agreed 
to curtail drastically their own activi¬ 
ties, in order not to compete with the 
University drive. There was, however, 
one significant exception to this agree¬ 
ment: the New York area, where, apart 
from a few wealthy alumni toward 
whom they were instructed to pursue 
a hands-off policy, they were free to 
campaign as before. But they were 
slow to take advantage of the latitude 
thus afforded them. 

A persistent problem has been the 
multiplicity of appeals to which Col¬ 
lege alumni are subjected — from the 
Fund, from the Capital Gifts Cam¬ 
paign, from the Alumni Association, 
to list just a few. The situation is 
exacerbated by the physical remote¬ 
ness of the Fund's 43rd Street offices 
from the campus, which complicates 
the task of record-keeping. As a result, 
it is not unusual for an alumnus who 
has just made a substantial contribu¬ 
tion to, say, the Capital Gifts Cam¬ 
paign to be reproached the following 
week by a Fund volunteer for ingrati¬ 
tude to his alma mater. Alumni, under¬ 
standably, are frequently annoyed. 
"You ought to synchronize your rec¬ 
ords," wrote one. "Why don't you 
cross-check?" snarled another. 

A third problem is more recent. 
This is the reaction, chiefly among 
older alumni, to campus disturbances, 
and what some believe to be excessive 
leniency on the part of the University 
in dealing with the perpetrators. Fund 
officials have addressed themselves to 
this difficulty by appealing to the con¬ 
servative sympathies of potential do¬ 
nors. One letter, dispatched to alumni 
who contributed in the recent past but 
have not given to the current drive, 
warns that those who withhold sup¬ 
port are unwittingly playing into the 
hands of the extremists. Barabas indi¬ 
cated that this appeal would not be 


82 





mailed to alumni who have graduated 
since 1940. 

There are hopeful portents for the 
future. Talk is in the air of adding stu¬ 
dents to the Fund's Board of Directors, 
although no concrete steps have been 
taken. Conceivably an upswing in the 
market will loosen alumni purses. But 
the vital issue is still how to make 
alumni aware of institutional needs. 
The College cannot meet rising costs 
with lagging contributions. 

Cinch on the 
Moon 

What do you call an anthology of 
avant garde poetry and prose culled 
from Columbia's oldest student liter¬ 
ary magazine? Boogaloo Down Broad¬ 
way? Sons and Lovers? Irresistible 
Poison? Snot Noses? 

These were a few of the possibili¬ 
ties the editors toyed with before set- 
ling on A Cinch: Amazing Works from 
the Columbia Review. Published in 
December by Columbia University 
Press, the collection is drawn from the 
Review of the sixties. It was put to¬ 
gether by former Review editors Leslie 
Gottesman '68, Hilton Obenzinger '69, 
and Alan Senauke '69. Most of the 23 
writers represented were under¬ 
graduates in the College at the time 
they contributed to the magazine. Five 
have since published books of poetry, 
one has authored a novel, and virtually 
all of them have been published in 
other literary periodicals, such as Paris 
Review. 

The Columbia Review is miles 
apart from the usual college literary 
magazines, so many miles that the 
Cinch editors claim it's on the moon, 
"in the outer spaces of humor." Their 
flashback introduction traces the 
magazine's breakaway from conven¬ 
tionality to the spring of 1963, when 
an issue assembled by Ron Padgett 
and Jonathan Cott (both Class of '64) 
so alarmed the administration that it 
was censored. But the administration 
eventually gave up fighting the in¬ 
evitable, and the next year the Re¬ 
view emerged victorious, dirty words 
and creative freedom intact. 

Not that freedom merely provides 
the serious young Review writers with 


with an excuse for scatology. Taboos 
are frequently, even gleefully, violated 
in some of the selections. But the con¬ 
tributors seem to be mainly interested 
in using language in new ways. One 
may find individual pieces self-con¬ 
scious, grotesque, or opaque — but 
hardly ever pedestrian. Among the 
more easily described works in the 
anthology are a poem consisting of 
the names of wrestling holds; a 
child's-mind perception of grade 
school; a poem in a made-up dialect; 
and a satiric account of a mixer at 
Sarah Lawrence, as seen by several 
participants. Political polemic is strik¬ 
ingly absent from the selections. In¬ 
fluences discernible in various pieces 
range from the French surrealists to 
nouvelle vague writer Robbe-Grillet. 

But the most pervasive influence 
on the Columbia literati is not so ob¬ 
vious. It is no coincidence that the 
renaissance of the Review came during 
the years when poet Kenneth Koch 
began teaching in the College. Most 
of the writers represented in A Cinch 
took his "sparkplug writing course." 
Gottesman et al. call Koch an "in¬ 
describable white light" and ascribe 
to his inspiration the "madcap ad¬ 
venturousness," "sober professional¬ 
ism," and "eclecticism" of the writing 
in A Cinch. Koch returns the compli¬ 
ment, giving the book his ultimate 
accolade: "Terrific!" 

Working on A Cinch was a novel 
experience for Harry Segessman, the 
editor at Columbia University Press 
who helped get the collection out in 
a record six months. He found the 
Review writers such a change from 
the Press' usual scholarly authors 
that he kept notes on the progress of 


the book. "Decisions on the contents, 
design, and jacket were all made by 
the editors," he said, pulling out a file 
stuffed with information forms col¬ 
lected from each person published in 
A Cinch. Answers to questions on the 
form suggest the sort of things he 
found noteworthy. Take the standard 
request, "Please describe your new 
book briefly, including important 
points to emphasize in promotion." 
Phil Lopate '64, who had of course not 
seen the book, described it as "an 
average-sized volume of 300 pages, 
comfortable in the hand, and with a 
cool texture not unlike salamander 
skin." Commented Ted Berrigan, one 
of the few non-Columbia graduates in 
the collection, "It's a hell of a book." 

Do the critics agree? Not sur¬ 
prisingly, they don't entirely agree 
even among themselves. A reader for 
the Library journal found the intro¬ 
duction "such a clever and wild piece 
of writing that it nearly overshadows 
the text proper" and singled out indi¬ 
vidual pieces as "entertaining, and 
occasionally admirable, if not always 
amazing." 

The reviewer for the Saturday Re¬ 
view Syndicate, on the other hand, 
deplored the "flip title, the soph- 
omoric humor of the jacket copy, 
and the clowning of the editors' in¬ 
troduction" and suggested that the 
reader "go to the contributors them¬ 
selves, some of whom have talent as 
writers." 

Other reviewers have found the 
collection "exciting" and "strange." 
Judge for yourself, and find out what 
makes Columbia a center of literary 
experimentation. A Cinch is $7.95 
hardbound, $2.95 in paper. 


Leslie Gottesman, Alan Senanke, and Hilton Obenzinger, 
editors of A Cinch. 



83 




Youthful Grover Loening stands next to early biplane. 





AVIATION'S 

FLYING 

START 

By Peter Salzberg 


Peter Salzberg '64 former associate editor of Columbia College Today, is presently 
Columbia's varsity golf coach and directs the College's athletic recruitment program. 


It was the spring of 1909. Dean John H. Van Amringe was about to retire, South Field was being sodded 
with turf for baseball and football competition, and Spectator was running advertisements for fur coats and 
$50 pocket watches. 

A group of College men, many of them from New York's "better" families, decided that campus life 
wasn't exciting enough. "They were a fast crowd, interested in racing-cars and women," one of their con¬ 
temporaries recalls. 

"We thought that life at Columbia just wasn't what it used to be," explains Robert L. Fowler '09, "so we 
organized what we called a high life club." Another member of the group, a short, wiry, and intense senior 
named Grover Loening, suggested that the cavalierish tendencies be channeled into aeronautics. 

The idea was enthusiastically received, and Fowler was elected president of the new Columbia Aero Club, 
which included 23 of the more affluent and daring students on campus. They chose five faculty members, 
including President Nicholas Murray Butler, and named them faculty affiliates. In the presumptuous, mag¬ 
nanimous way of students, they then awarded honorary membership to six men who had already begun to 
make aviation history: Leon Delagrange, a French balloonist who also experimented with gliders; Augustus 
Post, a daring pilot of the flimsy biplanes of 1909; A. Leo Stevens, another famed balloonist; Orville and 
Wilbur Wright, the two bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio, who in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, N.C. made the 
world's first powered flight; and Count Ferdinand Zeppelin, the German who pioneered lighter-than-air 
dirigibles. Loening was elected first vice-president. 

Initially, the organization undertook nothing more ambitious than a series of sumptuous banquets, at 
which distinguished scientists and aviators often spoke. Loening began to grow disillusioned with the social 
pretentiousness and apparent aimlessness of the enterprise. "I liked the excitement, the interest, the talk about 
flying," he later wrote in one of his many books, "but soon got fed up with the intrigue and petty politics." 
So he got together with some of the more serious-minded members of the group, and they laid secret plans 
for a project more challenging than a banquet. 


85 







"COLUMBIA MEN BUILDING 
AEROPLANE" headlined the New York 
World on April 12, 1909, after news 
had leaked out: 

Rapidly taking form in 
the Gould boathouse on the 
Hudson (at 116th St.) is an 
aeroplane, which will have its 
first trial in about 15 days. 

The airship is being con¬ 
structed by members of the 
Columbia University Aero 
Club. 

Great secrecy has been 
maintained, and the work has 
progressed behind closed 
doors, with only a few of the 
boys being entrusted with the 
knowledge of what was un¬ 
derway. 

"At that early date I quickly 
learned two things about aviation," 
Loening would write in Our Wings 
Crow Faster (1934): "how easy it was 
to get publicity, and how hard to 
avoid it." 

It was Loening's first opportunity 
to put to practical use the technical 
know-how he'd acquired through tire¬ 
less study and talks with many of avia¬ 
tion's pioneers. "I have always liked 
to sort of sit in the back room and tell 
the boys what to do," he recalled re¬ 
cently at his home in Key Biscayne, 
Fla., where he has lived for the past 
30 years. "Many of the fliers in those 
days were rich playboys, and with our 
Aero Club I let the others take all the 
publicity while getting them to work 
on my plans. The club was an amusing 
stunt for them, and they were willing 
to do almost anything for excitement. 
But for me, it was serious business." 

Work progressed rapidly on the 
biplane, a glider, during the evenings 
that spring. Only eight Columbia men 
actually built the aircraft, but it took 
the efforts of most of the 23 members 
to finance the operation. "We had 
several who came from rather wealthy 
families, including Jay Gould," Loen¬ 
ing remembers, "and they got most of 
the money to buy materials from their 
parents." The eight who worked on 
the plane were, in addition to Loen¬ 
ing, Harold Henderson '10, Edward 
Hinman '10, Francis Ives '09, George 
Warren '10, Ernest Werndl, Ben Willis 
'09 and club president Fowler. 

The wings were built with bam¬ 
boo spars and wood strips, covered 
with silk, and braced with piano wire. 
The fuselage was mounted on a racing 
shell (borrowed from the crew) which 
had been covered over with canvas, 
except for a small opening where the 
pilot could sit. It was probably the 


first attempt anywhere to construct a 
flying boat. 

The young engineers were con¬ 
fident that the project would succeed. 
"We expected to take off and land on 
the Hudson regularly once we all 
mastered flying technique," Loening 
says. Long-range plans even included 
the purchase of a motor after motor¬ 
less flights had become routine. 

In late April came the initial at¬ 
tempt to get the new glider airborne. 
Loening's plan was to have it towed 
by a motorboat until it was sailing 
fast enough to ascend. With Loening 
seated in the racing shell, clutching 
the crude controls, the motorboat 
started off. Aero Club students looked 
on anxiously from the dock as the tow 
line pulled taut and the biplane began 
to move over the water. "It was pretty 
discouraging," Loening concedes. 
"The faster it was towed, the more the 
shell dug in and clung to the water. 
The spray, of course, went right over 
my head. Not a sign of lifting at all." 

Eventually, dwindling funds, the 
imminence of final exams, and 
interference with the rowing crew 
forced the young enthusiasts to aban¬ 
don the experiment. The club sur¬ 
vived, however, through the 'teens 
and into the early twenties, as long as 
the glamor and the novelty of flying 
endured. In the first intercollegiate 
aeroplane races, held May 3, 1919 in 
Atlantic City, Columbia's A. L. Smith 
took first place in the land plane divi¬ 
sion. In the seaplane division, the crew 
of M. S. Martin '21L and Lt. R. M. 
Craigmyle '20, who would later serve 
as a University trustee from 1957 until 
1963, won second place honors. 

Groever Loening went on to be¬ 
come one of the great pioneers of the 
aviation industry, a creative force 
whose advice has been sought con¬ 
tinuously by private corporations and 
government for almost 60 years. 

Loening was born in 1888 in 
Bremen, Germany, where his father 
was U.S. consul-general. When he 
was still very young, his family re¬ 
turned with him to America, settling 
in Manhattan. At Columbia he was on 
the swimming team, active in the row¬ 
ing club ("That came in handy when I 
wanted to use the boathouse for 
building the plane"), and a member of 
the Alliance Fran^aise ("It was great 
for dirty French plays with the Barnard 
girls.") 

Loening's mother introduced him 
to aviation by taking him to "aero¬ 
plane demonstrations" at Morris Park, 
then a racetrack in the Bronx. In the 
fall of 1909, while he was starting 


work toward an M.A. at the School of 
Mines (now the School of Engineer¬ 
ing), she got him a pass to the Hudson- 
Fulton air demonstration on Gover¬ 
nor's Island, through banker Augustus 
Belmont. (Takeoff Into Greatness is 
dedicated to his mother — "whose 
early interest in flying put me on the 
right beam.") The Hudson-Fulton ex¬ 
hibition saw the first public flying ap¬ 
pearance of Wilbur Wright, whom 
Loening met that day. The two men 
corresponded until Wright's death in 
1912. 

Loening's M.A. program, with a 
major in aerodynamics, was worked 
out by special arrangement with Presi¬ 
dent Butler and Prof. Richard C. Mc- 
Laurin, head of the Department of 
Mechanics, since Columbia offered no 
courses in aerodynamics at that early 
date. (McLaurin became president of 
M.l.T. two years later, and promptly 
set up the nation's first technological 
course in aeronautical engineering.) In 
June, 1910, Loening's thesis was ac¬ 
cepted, and he became the first man 
in America to receive the degree of 
Master of Arts in Aeronautics. 

The thesis, entitled Monoplanes 
and Biplanes, was a 6,000 word effort 
in three sections. The first dealt with 
the lift forces created by the move¬ 
ment of horizontal surfaces through 
the atmosphere—the physics of flying; 
the second described existing aircraft; 
and the third suggested improvements 
in engineering and piloting tech¬ 
niques. "With the present motors and 
types of airplane structure available," 
Loening concluded, "a racing machine 
capable of making 85 to 90 miles an 
hour could be designed with ease." 

Scientific American magazine ran 
the thesis in installments, after pur¬ 
chasing the publishing rights from 
Loening for $50. Later that year a Lon¬ 
don publishing house printed the 
work in book form, and sold 2,000 
copies. It was quite an accomplish¬ 
ment for a young man who had not 
yet flown in a plane. 

His first flight finally came in the 
fall of 1911, at an air meet on Nassau 
Boulevard in Queens. Since the air¬ 
craft was only a single-seater, Loening 
had to sit on the edge of a biplane 
wing, clinging to a wing strut. It was a 
harrowing trip, lasting only a few 
minutes, and Loening remembers it 
as the most exciting he's ever taken. 

The meet also brought him his 
first job, for there he met Willis Mc- 
Cornick, who offered him a position 
as engineer with the Queens Aero¬ 
plane Company, at 197th Street and 
Amsterdam Avenue. In June, 1912, 
Loening made some test runs for 


86 




THE WEIGHT COMPANY 


Queens in an "aeroboat" on the bay 
waters at Bayonne, N. J. "In those 
early hops," he wrote, "I was trying to 
kill two birds with one stone: taking 
due care not to kill myself while 
teaching myself how to fly-and ex¬ 
perimentally testing a new airplane." 

A year later, he took a job with 
the Wright Brothers in Dayton, Ohio, 
as an engineering assistant. He had to 
hock his pocket watch to raise rail¬ 
road fare for the trip to the company 
offices. One of his assignments was to 
represent the Wrights when the Navy 
was moving its flight operations from 
Annapolis to Pensacola, Fla. in Febru¬ 
ary, 1914. It was his first contribution 
to military aviation, and by no means 
his last. 

The Army was having serious 
problems with maintenance and pilot 
training at its base in San Diego, Cal. 
By offering him $3600 a year, double 
the salary he was receiving from the 
Wright Brothers, the Army engaged 
Loening as its first aeronautical en¬ 
gineer, a civilian post. When he ar¬ 
rived in San Diego in July, 1914, eight 
of the fourteen officer pilots licensed 
in 1914 had already died in aviation 
accidents. 

Loening and Lt. Thomas DeWitt 
Milling, a friend whom he'd met at 
flying meets, established a "construc¬ 
tion and repair" department to deal 
with engineering problems of Army 
aircraft. One of their first moves, after 
they had gathered all the facts on the 
aviation mishaps, was to rule all the 
Curtiss and Wright planes unsafe to 
fly. ("Lord knows they were, although 
it might have been disloyal of me to 
say so.") Loening and Milling visited 
the small Los Angeles plant of Glenn 
L. Martin, who would become the 
world's most successful manufacturer 
of military aircraft, and worked out 
with him the details of a new Model T. 
It featured dual controls, and was, ac¬ 
cording to Loening, the Army's first 
"really safe and satisfactory" training 
plane. A few weeks later, the new air¬ 
craft was delivered to San Diego. In 
the six-month period which followed, 
the pilot school turned out 29 officer- 
pilots with only one fatality: a drown¬ 
ing after a forced landing during a 
violent storm at sea. 

Out of his lectures at the Army 


(Top) A CAREER TAKES OFF: Letter 
confirming young Loening's appointment 
to the Wright Company. 
(Center) THE GRAND DESIGN: Blueprint 
for the Wright brothers' aircraft which 
made the world's first powered flight. 

(Bottom) Crover Loening sits at the 
controls of a Wright airplane. 




11 PINE STREET 

Xkw York, July 10, 191J. 


Mr. Grover Cleveland Loening, 

897 Madison Avenue, 

Mew York City. 

Dear Sir: 

Confirming our conversation of thia date, our 
Company proposea to employ you at e salary of $la00. 
par year, payable monthly. 

Your duties shall be such as shall be assigned 
by the President. 

You will please report at Dayton, July 14th. 

Yours very truly. 



87 





















base came his second published work, 
Military Airplanes, printed in 1915. 
Within three years 43,000 copies were 
sold to such customers as the British 
RAF and the Canadian RAF, as well as 
the U.S. armed services. The volume 
cost about a dollar a copy to produce, 
and sold for $4.75, so Loening's profit 
was well over $100,000. Fie was not 
yet 30. 

Shortly after the book was pub¬ 
lished, Loening resigned his position 
with the army to become vice- 
president and general manager of the 
Sturtevant Airplane Company, which 
he helped to organize. When war 
broke out, he left Sturtevant and 
offered his services to the Navy. For a 
time he served as consulting engineer 
to the Aircraft Board. Then, with the 
capital from his book royalties, he 
formed a company of his own, in 
order to design and produce a highly 
specialized light plane which the Navy 
badly needed. 

The Loening Aeronautical Engi¬ 
neering Corporation moved into 
offices on the fifth floor of a factory 
building on West 52nd Street in New 
York City, and set promptly to work 
on the new aircraft. The Armistice 
intervened before the plane could 
be completed, and plans were 
dropped. But within a few years, Loen¬ 
ing came up with three other aero¬ 
nautical innovations: rigid strut brac¬ 
ing for monoplanes, retractable land¬ 
ing gear, and the Loening amphibian 
plane, the first craft capable of setting 
down on land or water. 

In 1921, he was awarded the Col¬ 
lier Trophy for "the most meritorious 
development successfully proved dur¬ 
ing the year," following the successful 
production of the Loening Flying 
Yacht. The new flying boats were 
quickly sold to such prominent figures 
as Harold Vanderbilt and Vincent 
Astor. Shortly afterward, the company 
began receiving Navy contracts for 
new-style amphibian planes, which 
the Navy used throughout the late 
1920s and into the 1930s. In Decem¬ 
ber, 1926, the U.S. Army dispatched 
a squadron of five amphibians on the 
Pan-American Good Will Flight, a 
22,000-mile series of hops which 
started in San Antonio, Texas, touched 
down in each country along the coast¬ 
lines of Central and South America, 
and finally returned to Washington, 
D.C. five months later. 

Publicity from the Pan-American 
flight and the subsequent Lindbergh 
transatlantic flight created a boom in 
the airplane industry in 1928. (Charles 
Lindbergh, Loening recalls, "was a sin¬ 
gularly human and sensible guy, an 


occasional guest at my flat in New 
York City. He was annoyed, and right¬ 
ly so, by all the publicity incidents 
woven around him and by the adula¬ 
tion of people he didn't know and had 
no interest in. The most surprising 
thing I found about him was his tech¬ 
nical ability. He was a born engineer.") 
It was a time of mergers and big Wall 
Street investments in the industry, and 
Loening sold his firm to the Wright 
Company for several millions, just a 
year before the crash of 1929. 

He then embarked upon the sec¬ 
ond stage of his career in aeronautics, 
as a consulting engineer, a capacity in 
which he serves even today. He has 
been a progressive voice in an indus¬ 
try which occasionally lapses into 
what he calls "unimaginative conserv¬ 
atism." On March 10, 1965, he ap¬ 
peared before a Senate aviation sub¬ 
committee to urge the development 
of a plane which can travel in any 
direction— forwards, backwards, or 
sideways. Such a plane, he pointed 
out, would help to solve holding pat¬ 
tern problems which plague major 
airports. He has long advocated the 
construction of city heliports for pur¬ 
poses ranging from intercity mail 
transportation to treatment of hospital 
emergency cases. Three years after he 
told the subcommittee that hospitals 
should be equipped with rooftop heli¬ 
ports, a helicopter rushed a diver — 
suffering from the bends —from the 
Jersey shore and landed in Central 
Park. As a result, the victim was trans¬ 
ferred to a decompression chamber 
just in time to save his life. The effort 
was hailed as a breakthrough in hos¬ 
pital technique. 

Loening's principal criticism of 
the air industry has been the same, he 
says, since Aero Club days. "There's a 
ten-year lapse between initial presen¬ 
tation of an idea and the time work 
starts. There's a five-year negative pe¬ 
riod, with everyone saying 'it can't be 
done,' followed by another five years 
of a 'maybe it will work' period, then 
finally everyone says 'let's get busy.' 
In 1912 I wanted metal props for my 
planes, but they weren't commercially 
available until 1922. 

"What we need now is a fast 
plane that can take off and land verti¬ 
cally (the so-called VTOL — Vertical 
Takeoff and Landing). The engineers 
today are too conservative, and I can't 
explain their poor thinking. Maybe the 
industry depends too much on the 
military, and the military won't buy 
new ideas. 

"It's an ignominious experience to 
be traveling in a helicopter, and be¬ 
cause of 25 or 30-mile-an-hour head¬ 


winds, you can look down below and 
some automobiles are going faster. 
The Army has finally learned in Viet 
Nam that that's the Achilles heel of 
the helicopter, it's too damn slow. 

"I need a vehicle that has a mini¬ 
mum speed of 250 miles an hour, seat¬ 
ing five, that can take off and land 
vertically. I still can't get a plane that 
I can really use," he complains, frus¬ 
trated by the aviation industry's re¬ 
luctance to keep pace with his pro¬ 
gressive ideas on the VTOL. 

Loening has served on the board 
of directors of Pan American Airways 
and of New York Airways, the com¬ 
pany which uses helicopters to shuttle 
passengers between the metropolitan 
area's three major airports. "A quarter 
of a million people in two years of 
operation, without a single accident," 
Loening proudly relates. He also 
served as one of the two civilian mem¬ 
bers of the advisory board of the Na¬ 
tional Air Museum of the Smithsonian 
Institute, to which he was appointed 
by President Truman and reappointed 
by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, 
and Johnson. The Museum will be 
built in Washington, D.C., across the 
Mall from the National Art Gallery. 

"In 1935," he recounts, "the Li¬ 
brary of Congress induced me to send 
them my papers, on the theory that I 
was all through. (Loening was 47 at 
the time.) I've retired three or four 
times, but after a few boring months 
I have to get started again. I haven't 
retired recently because I've realized 
that the word 'retiring' means getting 
away from something that is a burden. 
Working with aeronautics has never 
been that for me." 

He has been keeping his pub¬ 
lishers busy as well as himself. Al¬ 
ways a prolific writer, he has increased 
his output in recent years. Last spring, 
when he was past 80, he published 
Takeoff Into Greatness, his fourth ma¬ 
jor book on aviation. And in April of 
1970, at the age of 81, he turned out 
his first novel: The Conquering Wing 
(Chilton Book Co., Philadelphia), 
which recreates the excitement of the 
flying exhibitions of 1911 and 1912. 
"It's one of the new 'faction' novels," 
Loening explains, "because it's built 
around real people." A week after it 
appeared, the author was already 
looking ahead to the publication of 
his second novel late in 1971. 

That is typical of Loening, who is 
always looking ahead. His mind is on 
the future even as he reminisces about 
the old Aero Club days. "The past 
bores the hell out of me," he says. 
"We haven't even gotten started yet in 
the real development of the air." 


88 






PIONEERS: Grover Loening (I.) with Orville Wright. 



Dr. Loening today at his Key Biscayne home, surrounded by photographs of other 

aviation greats whom he has known. 


89 















1m tWtl? Few Wbj 


Few of the antiwar demonstrators who paraded last fall along the red-brick paths and concrete sidewalks of 
Morningside Heights realized it, but the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam had a special meaning for 
Columbia. It signified almost a complete reversal of the policies of the University dominated by President 
Nicholas Murray Butler during the First World War. For when the United States marched off to war in 1917, 
the moratorium declared at Columbia and throughout the rest of the nation was not on the war, but on 
opposition. 

University authorities began to gird for combat and move against dissent within days after Woodrow Wil¬ 
son broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Early in February, 1917, Butler convoked a special assembly 
of the University and pledged Columbia's loyalty to the President. Within a week, a faculty committee began 
preparing plans for a survey of the strategic skills of some 50,000 Columbia officers, alumni, and students. A 
mass meeting of Columbia students, after ejecting several pacifists, vowed to support the government if war 
came, and voted in the meantime to form a military training unit on the campus. Soon, students and alumni 



90 

















By John Chambers 


were practicing close-order drill in the gymnasium and on South Field in the area where Butler Library stands 
today. 1 

As the war fever grew in March, the faculty and trustees joined in the militant enthusiasm which swept the 
country. Some five hundred Columbia professors signed a wire to President Wilson demanding "energetic 
resistance to Germany's lawless attacks [on American shipping]/' and urging recognition of a state of war 
The trustees formally committed the University to the national defense and complimented Butler for taking 
steps to mobilize the institution. Then, in an apparent attempt to root out radical or pacifist professors, the 
trustees voted to launch an investigation of the faculty to determine, in their words, "whether doctrines which 
are subversive of, or tend to the violation or disregard of, the Constitution or the laws of the United States 
... or which tend to encourage a spirit of disloyalty to the Government of the United States, or the principles 
upon which it is founded, are taught [at Columbia]." Thus, the trustees placed themselves in the vanguard of 
what eventually became a nation-wide witch-hunt against all those who did not extend whole-hearted sup¬ 
port to the war. v 


91 











































SHAPING UP: S.A.T.C. cadet hangs laundry outside 
University Gym while comrade sweeps the grounds. 


FOR THE HOME FRONT: Army cinematographers learn to 
produce stirring war movies in the basement of 
Havemeyer. 


TWO DAYS IN MAY: On May 10,1917, these Columbia men packed Low Plaza as President Butler conferred degrees 
on French marshals. On May 4, 1970, students congregated in the same area to hear President Cordier denounce 


the Vietnam war. 



92 















When hostilities broke out in 
April, 1917, Columbia stepped up its 
mobilization. Students drilled outside, 
studied to become officers as Butler 
suggested—and indeed encouraged by 
eliminating tuition fees for military 
science courses — and joined the 
alumni to form a Columbia battalion, 
which the. Governor x^f New York 
eventually accepted into the State Na¬ 
tional Guard. Other students, clad in 
blue uniforms, crawled through 
hatches and peered at guns and in¬ 
struments aboard the U.S.S. Granite 
State, docked in the Hudson River at 
the foot of 97th Street. "The thrill of 
service is in the air these days," a 
student editor exulted. Within two 
months after the declaration of war, 
nearly one-third of the 1,500 Colum¬ 
bia College students had signed up 
for some form of national service. 
Towards the end of the spring 
semester, the first contingent of 300 
Columbia men left for the reserve of¬ 
ficers' training camp at Plattsburgh, 
New York, after a three-day send-off 
which included a speech by the mayor 
of New York City and a salute from the 
West Point band. 

University authorities bestowed 
an institutional blessing upon the 
allied cause. At a special outdoor con¬ 
vocation in May, President Butler 
formally received the French and Brit¬ 
ish delegations which had come to 
this country to seek military and eco¬ 
nomic assistance. As Butler conferred 
honorary degrees upon Marshal 
Joffre, Lord Balfour, and other high- 
ranking officers, he announced that 
Columbia "associated itself as com¬ 
pletely as possible with the conse¬ 
crated courage and devotion of the 
two great nations . . . [which] have 
borne the brunt of the attack . . . upon 
the ordered and advancing civilization 
of the modern world." 

Not all of President Butler's 
fellow-citizens were so devoted to Bri¬ 
tain and France, or convinced of the 
wisdom of U.S. policy. Many Ameri¬ 
cans from Ireland, Germany, and 
Austria, as well as pacifists, socialists, 
and others were opposed to inter¬ 
vention. Before the declaration of war, 
they had been vocal in their opposi¬ 
tion. Afterwards, however, many 
former critics supported the govern¬ 
ment or else kept quiet. Those who 
did neither were usually silenced by 
intimidation or coercion. The Com¬ 
mittee on Public Information, the Jus¬ 
tice Department, and the semi-official 
American Protective League moved 
forcefully to suppress dissent and whip 
up unanimous support for the war. 


While these groups rooted out skep¬ 
tics across the country, the Columbia 
administration acted with equal vigor 
against the disaffected on campus. 

Amidst the flags and band music 
of Commencement Day, Butler de¬ 
creed an end at Columbia to the de¬ 
bates of the prewar period. No fur¬ 
ther criticism of the war or the 
government would be permitted. 
"What had been tolerated before be¬ 
comes intolerable now," he said. 
"What had been wrongheadedness is 
now sedition. What had been folly is 
now treason ..." To ensure that the 
faculty and students understood, 
Butler admonished them that "this is 
the University's last and only warning 
to any among us, if such there be, who 
are not with whole heart and mind and 
strength committed to fight to make 
the world safe for democracy." 
Nicholas Murray Butler, an active 
member of the Carnegie Endowment 
for International Peace, had culmin¬ 
ated his metamorphosis from peace¬ 
time pacifist to wartime superpatriot 
by ordering a moratorium on dissent. 

The Columbia community had 
not been united on the war or on 
Butler's mobilization of the campus. 
Many on Morningside Heights had 
fought intervention and, after war was 
declared, opposed the mobilization 
measures which followed. Even the 
rupture in diplomatic relations did not 
prevent two-thirds of the Barnard Un¬ 
dergraduate Association from voting 
for a resolution condemning the war, 
and the main campus had several out¬ 
spoken pacifist students and an active 
chapter of the Collegiate Anti-Mili¬ 
tarism League. Such professors as 
John W. Burgess, then emeritus, and 
Carleton J. H. Hayes spoke out pub¬ 
licly against intervention. Henry R. 
Mussey, an assistant professor of eco¬ 
nomics at Barnard, privately expressed 
his concern over Butler's February 
pledge of loyalty which, he felt, com¬ 
mitted the University in advance to 
whatever the government might de¬ 
cide, and renounced Columbia's tradi¬ 
tional function "of serving as a center 
for sober and thoughtful discussion." 

Far from serving as a center for 
thoughtful discussion, the University 
took active measures to restrict it. The 
first victim of the new order was 
Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of the famous 
Russian writer and pacifist. Shortly 
after the February loyalty convoca¬ 
tion, Professor J. D. Prince barred 
Tolstoy from speaking on campus to 
the International Law Club. Prince ex¬ 
plained that Tolstoy, who had been 
lecturing in the United States on his 


father's gospel of love and nonre¬ 
sistance, might belittle patriotism. De¬ 
spite protests from many professors 
and students, Butler sustained the de¬ 
cision, and Columbia was saved from 
Count Tolstoy and his pacifist doc¬ 
trine. 

The next casualty was the campus 
humor magazine. Appalled by Butler's 
"jingoistic" February convocation 
speech and the exclusion of Count 
Tolstoy, Jester editor Morris Ryskind 
attacked Butler as a "czar" and de¬ 
nounced his "autocratic measures." 
In the furor that followed, the maga¬ 
zine's managing board removed Rys¬ 
kind for "ungentlemanly and treacher¬ 
ous" conduct, and the University ex¬ 
pelled the young senior from the 
School of Journalism. The next editor 
apologized for his predecessor's be¬ 
havior, and, for the duration, the 
magazine shunned political criticism 
and indeed neglected the war alto¬ 
gether except for some crude jokes 
and cartoons. One limerick entitled 
"Another Piece Movement" and ac¬ 
companied by a drawing showing the 
Kaiser being scattered out of a can¬ 
non, read: 

There was a young man 
from Berlin 

Who was tall and extraor¬ 
dinarily thin, 

Till one day just for fun 
He crawled into a gun 
And the way he did spread 
was a sin! 

To a great many students at Columbia 
and elsewhere in 1917 —young col¬ 
legians in suits, vests, high collars, 
high button shoes, and broad- 
brimmed peaked hats — war still 
seemed a humorous game. 

The few Columbia men who ac¬ 
tively opposed intervention and mo¬ 
bilization were dealt with swiftly and 
severely by University authorities. In 
May, 1917, while Congress debated 
the first conscription law since the 
Civil War, three Columbia students 
joined delegates from other colleges 
at the New York headquarters of the 
Collegiate Anti-Militarism League to 
organize opposition to the draft. One 
of the League's projects was to pre¬ 
pare pamphlets attacking conscrip¬ 
tion. When Owen Cattell, a College 
senior and the son of a Columbia psy¬ 
chology professor, tried to have the 
pamphlets printed, Justice Depart¬ 
ment agents arrested him and two 
companions: Charles F. Philips, of 
Columbia's extension school, and 
Eleanor W. Parker, a Barnard senior. 


93 




All were accused of advocating re¬ 
sistance to the new draft law, which 
had been enacted just a few days be¬ 
fore. 

When Butler learned of the in¬ 
dictments and read the pamphlet, 
which denounced conscription as 
"abhorrent to any true conception of 
democracy. It violates the funda¬ 
mental rights of man-liberty and con¬ 
science," he refused to allow the three 
back on campus. At the June Com¬ 
mencement, he withheld diplomas 
from the two seniors. "No person con¬ 
victed of a conspiracy against the 
United States government," he told 
reporters, "will ever receive a di¬ 
ploma from Columbia University." 
The campus newspaper, Spectator, ap¬ 
plauded Butler's decision and de¬ 
nounced the draft resisters as "mor¬ 
ally guilty of treason." 

Of course, no conviction had yet 
been handed down at the time that 
the President spoke. In the case of 
at least one of the three defendants, 
moreover, his words were premature. 
The indictment against Miss Parker 
was later dismissed on the ground that 
all her activities had taken place be¬ 
fore the draft law was passed. She re¬ 
ceived her diploma in July. 

Yet another Columbia student, 
Leon Samson, told an off-campus 
rally sponsored by anarchist Emma 
Goldman's No-Conscription League 
that "as much as we hate the German 
Kaiser we hate still more the Ameri¬ 
can Kaiser [Woodrow Wilson.]" Butler 
summoned the junior to his office, 
where Samson pleaded his right to 
free speech. The angry administrator 
expelled him anyway, reporting after¬ 
ward to the trustees that "the dis¬ 
honestly assumed mask of the consti¬ 
tutional right of free speech will never 
be permitted by any people or by any 
institution that retains its sanity, to 
protect those who wage subtle war 
upon private morality, or public order, 
or public safety." The New York 
courts agreed, and dismissed Samson's 
suit for readmission. 

At the beginning of the fall se¬ 
mester in 1917, the University shifted 
its attention from student to faculty 
dissenters. Dr. Leon Fraser, an instruc¬ 
tor in politics at the College, was one 
of the first to go. During the prepared¬ 
ness campaign in 1916, he had criti¬ 
cized the military training camp pro¬ 
gram for civilians at Plattsburgh, and 
he had worked for the pacifistic As¬ 
sociation for International Concilia¬ 
tion. Ironically, he had obtained his 
position with the Association through 
President Butler himself. But in the 


wartime hysteria of 1917, the trustees 
refused to renew his contract. He then 
served as a major in France, became 
president years later of the First Na¬ 
tional Bank of New York, and-as a 
crowning irony—was appointed to the 
Columbia Board of Trustees. 

Crusading governing boards fired 
professors suspected of pacifism or 
pro-German sympathies at colleges 
and universities throughout the coun¬ 
try: Wisconsin, Michigan, Wellesley, 
Virginia, Oregon, Nebraska, Rice, 
Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. But the 
most famous expulsions occurred at 
Columbia. In early October, 1917, the 
trustees made front-page news when 
they ousted J. McKeen Cattell and 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana. 
Cattell, a full professor, was one of the 
leading experimental psychologists of 
the period, and the father of Owen 
Cattell, the senior who had lost his 
diploma the previous spring. Dana, an 
assistant professor of comparative 
literature, was the grandson of the 
famous poet. In their formal state¬ 
ment, the trustees declared that the 
the two professors "had done grave 
injury to the University by their pub¬ 
lic agitation against the conduct of the 
war." 

Both professors had actively op¬ 
posed the draft during the spring and 
summer of 1917. Dana, a leader of the 
pacifist People's Council of America 
for Peace and Democracy, had spoken 
at meetings of the Collegiate Anti- 
Militarist League and had posted bail 
for the Columbia student draft re¬ 
sisters. Cattell, the descendant of an 
old Quaker family and an ardent op¬ 
ponent of the war, had written on 
Columbia departmental stationery to 
several congressmen urging them to 
"support a measure against sending 
conscripts to fight in Europe against 
their will," and warning that "the in¬ 
tent of the Constitution and our con¬ 
sistent national policy should not be 
reversed without the consent of the 
people." The congressmen had com¬ 
plained to Butler that it appeared 
Cattell was "sowing the seeds of sedi¬ 
tion and treason with the sanction of 
the institution." 

At Columbia, as elsewhere, the 
war frequently offered an excuse to 
attack old enemies. Butler and the 
trustees had been trying for years to 
get rid of Cattell, a leader in the move¬ 
ment for faculty self-government 
whose irascible manner perturbed 
even his own colleagues. "We have 
got the rascal this time!" exulted the 
clerk of the trustees in a letter to But¬ 
ler. Few faculty members supported 


the pair; many, indeed, had actively 
sought their dismissal. Students seemed 
for the most part to agree with the 
editor of Spectator , who called the 
trustees' action "in the highest degree 
justifiable," and asserted that "the 
good name of Columbia has already 
suffered enough from the action of 
these two men." 

The campus consensus began to 
crack, however, when Prof. Charles 
A. Beard announced his resignation a 
week later. Beard was a renowned 
historian, political scientist, and 
progressive, and a tenured pro¬ 
fessor in the Department of Public 
Law, and his resignation shocked the 
university community. Although he 
actively supported the war and dis¬ 
agreed with Cattell and Dana, Beard 
was angered by the dismissals, which 
he considered to be the latest in a 
series of arbitrary actions by the ad¬ 
ministration. "The University is really 
under the control of a small and active 
group of trustees," Beard declared, 
"who have no standing in the world of 
education, who are reactionary and 
visionless in politics, narrow and me¬ 
dieval in religion ..." Speaking from 
personal experience, Beard charged 
that Columbia professors "have been 
subjected to humiliating doctrinal in¬ 
quisitions by the trustees, they have 
been expelled without notice or hear¬ 
ing, and their appointment and pro¬ 
motion depend upon securing, in 
advance, the favor of certain trus¬ 
tees ..." 

Only a few faculty members sup¬ 
ported Beard publicly, but many 
worked to reorganize the administra¬ 
tion and reduce trustee control over 
the faculty. Henry Mussey later re¬ 
signed in support of Beard, and Ellery 
C. Stowell, an associate professor of 
international relations, left the Uni¬ 
versity claiming that free speech was 
suppressed at Columbia. 

Charles Beard had been voted the 
most popular teacher on campus for 
several years and the students deeply 
regretted his departure. Most, how¬ 
ever, bore it with passivity. The loyal 
students, as the newspapers called 
them, far outnumbered the handful 
of dissidents. When some of the so- 
called radicals tried to channel pro- 
Beard sentiment into demands for 
free speech for Professors Dana and 
Cattell and student Leon Samson, their 
demonstrations were disrupted by 
chanting and egg-throwing students 
and servicemen. A threatened strike 
failed to occur, and two protest meet¬ 
ings produced nothing more militant 
than a plea for Beard to reconsider his 


94 





(Top) ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR: Today 
it's One-two-three-iour, free the Panthers, 
stop the war. (Left) Capt. R. Hodder- 
Williams writes out the words to the 
Marseillaise. (Below) Naval trainees march 
down 116th Street, now College Walk. 



resignation and a resolution urging "a 
desirable spirit of co-operation" 
among the trustees, faculty, and stu¬ 
dents. The vice president of the senior 
class, C. Perry Ivins, spoke in terms 
totally alien to the campuses of the 
1960s when he said, "We do not un¬ 
dertake, being as we are the youngest 
and most inconsequential part of the 
University—we do not undertake to 
advise our guardians what they shall 
do." James D. Livingston, a retired 
trustee and a leader of the Columbia 
battalion, attended the meeting, and 
told a reporter afterward that he 
found absolutely nothing in the stu¬ 
dents' declarations of which he could 
disapprove. 

The Columbia administration was 
obviously in full control of the 
campus in 1917, and during the 
academic year "the whole University," 
in Butler's words, "went upon a war 
footing." Led by Dean of the College 
Frederick Keppel, who went to Wash¬ 
ington to become Third Assistant Sec¬ 
retary of War, some 400 professors 
and administrators left Columbia for 
some form of wartime service, while 
hundreds of students poured into the 
officer training camps. Moreover, 
many who remained on Morningside 
sought just as eagerly to serve. Some 
faculty members outlined ways in 
which citizens could help the govern¬ 
ment in the Columbia War Series, a 
collection of pamphlets which ulti¬ 
mately reached an estimated 20 mil¬ 
lion persons; others served on draft 
boards or civil defense councils. A 
few students had spent the summer 
digging trenches and firing rifles at 
Camp Columbia, the University's old 
surveying camp near Litchfield, Con¬ 
necticut. More joined the Columbia 
Battalion when school began and 
drilled under the direction of a 
wounded and decorated Canadian of¬ 
ficer, Captain R. Hodder-Williams, 
who had been hired to prepare the 
young men for the reserve officers' 
program. The martial spirit was so 
strong among the students that Co¬ 
lumbia's fencing instructor decided 
to add lessons in the bayonet to those 
in the saber and foil, and he antici¬ 
pated some active bayonet clashes 
with Harvard and Yale during the com¬ 
ing season. 

Even the face of Columbia changed 
during the war. The President and the 
trustees opened the campus to the 
armed forces, and soon Marines and 
blue-jacketed sailors joined the stu¬ 
dents marching on the green under 
the glare of the recently installed elec¬ 
tric floodlights on South Field. Under 


95 


















faculty supervision, Navy engineers 
and mechanics pulled apart new gaso¬ 
line engines for sub-chasers and air¬ 
planes, while in the basement of 
Havemeyer Hall, Army cinematog¬ 
raphers practiced splicing film and 
learned how to produce combat 
movies to stir the patriotism of the 
folks back home and the young draf¬ 
tees in army cantonments. The trus¬ 
tees called for donations and erected, 
on University property on Gun Hill 
Road in the Bronx, a 500-bed Colum¬ 
bia War Hospital which the War De¬ 
partment filled with patients from the 
army camps around New York City. 
At the foot of 116th Street, the Colum¬ 
bia Boat House was converted into a 
festive canteen for servicemen, with 
Barnard girls serving as hostesses. 
Deutsches Haus at 419 W. 117th Street, 
the pre-war campus center for the 
study of German history and culture, 
fell victim to the war effort and be¬ 
came instead a draft board and a cen¬ 
ter for Americanizing adult aliens. 
The University renamed it Columbia 
House. 

Reviewing the first wartime ac¬ 
ademic year in June, 1918, President 
Butler reported to the trustees that 
"the effects of the war have been felt 
on every hand, so much so that the 
normal development of the Univer¬ 
sity's life and work has been for all 
intents and purposes suspended." 
But, he added, "We would not have 
had it otherwise. Columbia Univer¬ 
sity ... could have no end or purpose 
of its own to serve that would for a 
moment compare with its duty to as¬ 
sist the Government in the prosecu¬ 
tion of the war to a victorious con¬ 
clusion." 

The government would soon call 


Prof.). McKeen Cattell 



upon Columbia for even greater 
assistance than before. That fall, the 
war department virtually requisitioned 
the entire institution, and, in October, 
Columbia actually became an army 
camp, complete with student-soldiers, 
barracks, post exchange and parade 
ground. The transformation stemmed 
from the General Staff's call for an 
additional two million soldiers, in¬ 
cluding 70,000 officers, by the sum¬ 
mer of 1919, and from Congress' de¬ 
cision to reduce the minimum draft 
age from 21 to 18 in order to raise the 
necessary men. With congressional au¬ 
thorization, President Wilson ordered 
all male college students who were 18 
years old, and not deferred for medi¬ 
cal, dependency, or occupational rea¬ 
sons (there was no student deferment 
in those days) to be inducted into the 
army and to serve on active duty in the 
Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) 
at participating colleges. There they 
would remain until they were assigned 
to training camps for officers, NCOs, 
or specialists, or to cantonments as 
privates, depending upon their abil¬ 
ities. The government both directed 
and financed the program; it pre¬ 
scribed the curriculum and paid the 
colleges for tuition and other ex¬ 
penses, and gave the student soldiers 
a stipend of $30 a month. The main 
purpose of the SATC, as the general 
staff officer in charge of the program 
explained, was "to utilize the execu¬ 
tive and teaching personnel and the 
physical equipment of the colleges to 
assist in training our new armies." In 
the three months before the armistice 
ended its usefulness and Congress its 
appropriations, the SATC established 
units at 500 colleges, where it trained 
some 150,000 soldiers. It was the most 
massive federal intervention in higher 
education in American history up to 
that time, and as Charles Thwing, pres¬ 
ident of Western Reserve University, 
observed, the nation's colleges "be¬ 
came like the [wartime] railroads, es¬ 
sentially government institutions." 

At Columbia, students had beerf 
expecting some form of compulsory 
military training since early in theyear. 
When Captain Hodder-Williams an¬ 
nounced in February that a program 
would be instituted in the fall, the 
editor of Spectator accepted the news 
with equanimity. "Since the trend 
toward compulsory training has been 
steady and inevitable," he wrote, "it 
remains only to consider how such 
training will fit in with the college 
work and especially with athletics." 
The answer was that it would fit in 
totally. As the Dean of the College con¬ 


cluded after the war was over, "the re¬ 
sources of the College were placed at 
the disposal of the Government." Lec¬ 
tures, classrooms, dorms, newspaper 
and even the football team "were 
temporarily conducted in the interest 
of the SATC." 

On "Observance Day," October 
1, 1918, as the band from the Pelham 
Bay Naval Training Station piped out 
the National Anthem and martial mu¬ 
sic, 2,200 Columbia men—nearly one- 
third of the University students and 
two-thirds of the Columbia College 
student body—were inducted into the 
SATC and marched in formation off 
South Court into a drastically new 
life on Morningside Heights. For the 
next three months, they lived under 
military supervision and discipline in 
Livingston and Hartley Halls, which 
had been requisitioned by the army 
and converted into barracks, ate to¬ 
gether in mess halls, stood guard duty 
at the entrances to the post at Broad¬ 
way and Amsterdam Avenues, sub¬ 
mitted to room and uniform inspec¬ 
tions, and followed the same daily 
routine. They awoke to reveille at 
6:45 a.m., drilled for two hours after 
breakfast, marched in formation to 
academic and military classes, studied 
under enforced silence in the evening, 
and enjoyed just one hour of free time 
a day before turning in at taps at 
10 p.m. Private Robert M. Vogel, edi¬ 
tor of The Columbia SATC Spectator , 
bragged that "Columbia SATC is the 
best of all the collegiate training camps 
in the country." 

Others adapted less readily to 
military life. The historian of the Class 
of 1920 later noted in The Columbian 
how much the SATC students had wel¬ 
comed the armistice and the end of 
the program: "No longer the prohibi¬ 
tion against crossing Amsterdam and 
Broadway, no longer the standing on 
cold corners in the dead of night 
watching drab, uninteresting people 
flit past in the dark, no longer the ar¬ 
rival at every class exactly on time—the 
bitterest blow that the war had dealt 
[the Columbia student]. Once more he 
was a free lance able to come and go 
at will—a real Columbia man." 

Although President Butler hoped 
the government would continue some 
kind of universal training for national 
service after the war and allow the 
colleges to participate, the draft and 
the SATC were totally dismantled by 
Congress. Student officer training re¬ 
verted to the voluntary, much less de¬ 
manding, and infinitely smaller Re¬ 
serve Officers Training Corps program 
established in 1916. Although Colum- 


96 




- 


bia established an NROTC unit for the 
Navy in the mid-1920s, it was never 
more than a token force. 

SATC did, however, leave a more 
important legacy to Columbia: the 
Contemporary Civilization course 
which has been required of the thou¬ 
sands of freshmen who have entered 
the College since World War I. "CC" 
grew directly out of the "War Issues 
Course," an early cross-disciplinary ef¬ 
fort which attempted to explain the 
causes of the war and the conflicting 
philosophies and forms of government 
of the belligerents. As the war ended, 
several faculty members developed a 
similar course on "Peace Issues" to 
examine post-war problems—espe¬ 
cially the threat of Bolshevism—in the 
perspective of Western history. Thus 
"CC" was born. 

World War I had enveloped Co¬ 
lumbia like a rising tide, and the Uni¬ 
versity in its chauvinism had embraced 
it. In mounting waves of enthusiasm 
and dedication,, the University author¬ 
ities had increasingly committed the 
institution to the war effort until the 
campus had been converted into an 
army camp and most of its students 
into soldiers. Columbia itself literally 
went to war during 1917 and 1918. 

Today, 52 years and three wars 
later, there are different students and 
different administrators at Columbia, 
and, probably most important, there is 
a different war. This combination has 
produced a sharp departure from the 
policies and practices of the past. The 
Butler-dominated monolith which 
barred dissent and banished dissenters 
and enlisted the University in the war 
effort has given way to a more de¬ 
centralized, less authoritarian institu¬ 
tion. Since the Americanization of the 
Vietnam war in 1965, the campus has 


been the scene of mounting antiwar 
protest, to which the administration 
has responded, in most cases, with 
tolerance. During the past five years, 
Columbia students have held rallies, 
teach-ins, and demonstrations against 
the war, NROTC, and military recruit¬ 
ing on campus, and have seized Uni¬ 
versity buildings partly because of ob¬ 
jections to institutional involvement 
in Pentagon-sponsored research. The 
campus community overwhelmingly 
opposes the war. A poll by the Bureau 
of Applied Social Research in the 
spring of 1968 showed that approxi¬ 
mately 70 per cent of the faculty and 
students favored American military 
withdrawal from Vietnam. 

The University administration it¬ 
self has been caught up in the antiwar 
movement. In 1967, President Grayson 
Kirk's University Council agreed to 
stop sending class rankings to draft 
boards, and, the following year, the 
Dean of the College announced that 
draft resisisters who went to prison 
would be readmitted without loss of 
credit, in the same manner as draftees 
returning from the army. In the spring 
of 1969, the trustees voted to term¬ 
inate the NROTC program within four 
years. Last fall, the new, student- and 
faculty-dominated University Senate 
called for an end to the war and "im¬ 
mediate withdrawal" from Vietnam; 
President Andrew Cordier signed an 
appeal to the President of the United 
States for "a stepped-up timetable for 
withdrawal;" and the administration 
permitted students, faculty and other 
University employees to hold the larg¬ 
est antiwar demonstration at Columbia 
since the massive peace rallies of the 
1930s. More recently, the University 
Senate prohibited institutional partici¬ 
pation in classified research projects. 


And in May, the administration can¬ 
celled classes for several days, while 
faculty members and administrators 
took advantage of the impromptu re¬ 
cess to join their students in antiwar 
activities. 

Both America and Columbia have 
changed greatly since the long-ago 
days of World War I. Yet, a compari¬ 
son of 1917 and 1969 provides some 
valuable perspective for the present. 
It indicates, for example, how the 
governing machinery of the University 
has to some extent broadened, how 
the President's role has been altered 
in the new framework, how the Uni¬ 
versity has responded gradually to 
new forces, and, perhaps most amaz¬ 
ing of all, how relatively legitimate 
peaceful wartime opposition has be¬ 
come on the campus. The student 
antiwar activity of the 1960s is with¬ 
out precedent in America's wartime 
past, and it has helped produce some 
modification in policy, rather than the 
swift repression of World War I. 

But to most of the demonstrators 
at Columbia and other campuses last 
fall, the past was unimportant, and 
there was only the present and the 
lingering war in Vietnam. 


John Chambers is on leave from 
California State College at Hayward, 
where he is assistant professor of his¬ 
tory. He is completing his dissertation 
at Columbia on the draft during World 
War I. Mr. Chambers received the B.S. 
degree from Temple University and 
the M.A. from San Francisco State Col¬ 
lege. 



97 











Alumni Authors 


The Conquering Wing by Grover Loening '09 re¬ 
creates the daredevil days of aviation's beginnings 
in a whirlwind story of two young, intrepid pilots 
who join in a risky venture to manufacture air¬ 
planes for a new age. (Chilton, $5.00) 


Hofe's Instant College Selector by George Douglas 
Hofe '14 attempts to provide an instant guide — 
based on median SAT scores of present college 
student bodies — to aid the high school student 
in gauging which colleges and universities are 
likely to consider him a strong candidate. (Carteret 
Press, $5.00, cloth; $3.00, paper) 


Boil My Heart for Me by H. Baxter Liebler '11 
means "recharge my battery" in modern Navajo 
idiom, and is the story of Rev. Liebler's quiet 
struggle to establish a church, mission house, 
school, and medical clinic on a remote Navajo 
reservation in Utah. (Exposition Press, $6.00) 


Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason by John 
Herman Randall Jr. '18 offers a personal analysis 
of the significance of the Platonic dialogues as 
dramatic portrayals of the life of the mind, stress¬ 
ing that Plato's ideology is not synonymous with 
that of Socrates and that one can understand 
Plato's philosophy only when aware that the 
ironies and ambiguities of his dialogue method 
are essential to discovery of the truth. (Columbia 
University Press, $7.50) 

The Day Jean-Pierre Joined the Circus by Paul 
Gallico '19 is the tale of how a talented pet 
guinea pig belonging to a little French girl be¬ 
comes an entertainment star and brings fame, 
cheer, and an affectionate kangeroo home to his 
eleven-year-old mistress. (Franklin Watts, $4.95) 


Psychological Problems in the Father-Son Rela¬ 
tionship: A Case of Eczema and Asthma by Harold 
A. Abramson '20 gives the psychotherapeutic case 
history of a 23-year-old toolmaker whose intract¬ 
able allergies were directly related to his destruc¬ 
tive emotional relationship with his father. (Oc¬ 
tober House, $7.50) 


Al Smith: Hero of the Cities by Hannah and 
Matthew Josephson '20 is a biography of the fiery 
New York politician based partially on the papers 
of his friend and sometime colleague in reform, 
Frances Perkins, and stressing Smith's impressive 
accomplishments as Governor. (Houghton Mifflin, 
$7.95) 



The Time of Our Lives: the Ethics of Common 
Sense by Mortimer J. Adler '23 is a philosophical 
treatise dealing with the concept of finding "a 
good life" for oneself and assessing favorably the 
quality of American society in the 20th century. 
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, $7.95) 


A 13-21 by Louis Zukofsky '23, the second volume 
of this unrelentingly modernist poet's "lifetime 
work in progress," is a rich record of the poet's 
vital concerns, expressed in a mosaic of the deli¬ 
cately lyrical and flatly documentary. (Paris Re¬ 
view Editions, $5.95) 


The Business Cycle in a Changing World by Arthur 
Burns '25 chronicles the nature and causes of 
prosperity and depression, and diagnoses and in¬ 
terprets economic problems in a series of essays 
resurrected to commemorate Dr. Burrs' election 
as Honorary Chairman of the National Bureau of 
Economic Research. (Distributed by Columbia 
University Press, $8.50) 


The Flight of the Wild Gander by Joseph Campbell 
'25 expounds the thesis that myths are a function 
of nature as well as culture, and are not to be 
judged as true or false, but as effective or ineffec¬ 
tive catalysts of psychological and spiritual well¬ 
being. (Viking Press, $7.50) 


Myths, Dreams, and Religion edited by Joseph 
Campbell '25 is a collection of essays contributed 
by theologians, psychiatrists, and orientalists to 
enable the reader to explore the links between 
imagination and religion. (E. P. Dutton, $2.35) 


The Virginia Dynasties by Clifford Dowdey '25 re¬ 
counts in leisurely and fond fashion the evolution 
of Virginia's homegrown pre-Revolution aristoc¬ 
racy which produced such gentlemanly sons of 
liberty as Washington, Jefferson, and Henry. (Little, 
Brown and Co., $10.00) 


Colonial Massachusetts by James Playsted Wood 
'27 outlines in colorful detail, sometimes in the 
words of the colonists themselves, the first 160 
years of Massachusetts history, beginning with the 
Mayflower and ending with the formal establish¬ 
ment of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 
1780. Primarily for young adults. (Thomas Nelson, 
$3.95) 


98 







Crisis in the Skies by Joseph Lawrence Marx '30 is 
a disquieting expose of the hazards and incon¬ 
veniences of modern air travel which analyzes tie- 
ups, safety records, and collisions, and discusses 
solutions which have already been adopted — and 
those which still need to be discovered — to pre¬ 
vent catastrophe in commercial aviation. (David 
McKay, $6.95) 


Men, Money, and Medicine by Eli Cinzberg '31 
with Miriam Ostow examines the changing struc¬ 
ture of health services in the United States during 
the last 25 years and indicates the changes which 
must be made in our values and institutions be¬ 
fore the health industry can be restructured to 
cope with our still unsatisfied medical needs. 
(Columbia University Press, $8.50) 


The Dream Songs by John Berryman '32 gathers in 
one volume 385 of the poet's prize-winning song- 
poems which together constitute a master elegy 
on the contemporary human situation. (Farrar, 
Straus and Giroux, $10.00) 


High on Foggy Bottom by Charles Frankel '37 re¬ 
counts Professor Frankel's experiences as Assistant 
Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural 
Affairs between July 1965 and December 1967, and 
describes the commonplace events and curiosities 
of everyday life inside the United States govern¬ 
ment. (Harper & Row, $6.95) 


Opus 100 by Isaac Asimov '39 is a potpourri of 
selections chosen by Asimov from his first 99 
books along with a medley of personal comments 
about the origins of these samples and the flukes 
and fortunes of his career to date. (Houghton 
Mifflin, $5.95) 



From the Letters of Robert S. Gerdy '39 edited by 
Donald Harrison is a posthumous selection of 
letters written by Gerdy to his parents while he 
was serving as a public relations officer in the 
Army Air Corps during World War II. The letters 
forecast the literary conviviality Gerdy later dis¬ 
played as an editor for The New Yorker, and give a 
personal view of wartime England, France, and 
Germany. (Dorrance, $5.95) 


The Man Who Was Afraid by Edward LeComte '39 
is the frightening and frightened exploration of a 
fictional 47-year-old man into the origins and 
manifestations of his fears of women, life, and 
death. (Crown Publishers, $5.95) 


The Communist Party of Venezuela by Robert J. 
Alexander '40 charts the history of the Partido 
Comunista de Venezuela and illustrates how a 
government carrying out social reform can under¬ 
cut a Communist movement and how disaster can 
overtake a Communist party which resorts to 
violence and fails. (Hoover Institution Press, $6.00) 


Self and Society in Ming Thought edited by 
William Theodore de Bary '41 contains 11 essays 
by leading scholars of Chinese civilization dealing 
with the cultural and intellectual life and moral 
and philosophical precepts which flourished dur¬ 
ing the Ming Dynasty, 1369-1644. (Columbia Uni¬ 
versity Press, $17.50) 





From Generation to Generation: The Story of Re¬ 
production by John Gabriel Navarra '49, Joseph 
S. Weisberg, and Frank M. Mele answers the ques¬ 
tion ''Where do babies come from?" scientifically 
and thoroughly, and puts human reproduction in 
the context of the continuity of all living organ¬ 
isms. The book ends with mention of responsible 
behavior choices for teenagers and gives brief de¬ 
scriptions of social diseases and contraceptive de¬ 
vices. For ages 9-13. (Natural History Press, $3.95) 

Masque of Honor by Edward Linn and lack Pearl 
'50 unfolds the modern tale of a black man, Cap¬ 
tain David Walsh, who has been undeservedly ac¬ 
claimed as a Vietnam war hero, and must choose 
between accepting false glory or impaling his new 
fame on the painful horn of truth. (W. W. Norton, 
$5.95) 


Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes by Donald 
Holden '51 includes 32 full-page color plates of 
later works by America's first avant garde painter, 
along with Mr. Holden's extensive narrative re¬ 
evaluating the full development of Whistler's 
abstract vision. (Watson-Guptill, $17.50) 


Film 68/69, edited by Hollis Alpert and Andrew 
Sarris '51, is a collection of reviews and essays by 
leading American movie critics about 1968's most 
noteworthy films and cinematographic idiosyn¬ 
crasies and trends. (Simon and Schuster, $6.95) 



Management Guides to Mergers & Acquisitions 

edited by John L. Harvey and Albert Newgarden 
'52 brings together examples of the many kinds of 
information management needs to make decisions 
regarding business combinations and describes 
techniques for developing such data. Contributors 
include attorneys, accountants, investment bankers, 
and corporate executives. (Wiley-lnterscience, 
$14.95) 



Environmental and Cultural Behavior edited by 
Andrew P. Vayda '52 is a source book of ecological 
studies in cultural anthropology, with special em¬ 
phasis on making cultural practices intelligible by 
relating them to the environment in which they 
develop or occur. (Natural History Press, $4.50) 


Issues of the Populist and Progressive Eras, 1892- 
1912, edited by Richard M. Abrams '53 contains 
32 selections from the most important documents, 
speeches, contemporary descriptions, reports, etc. 
concerning events and issues of the populist and 
progressive eras. (Harper & Row, $3.25) 


I Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary- 
Cenera l ot the League of Nations, 1933-1940 by 

lames Barros '53 provides a profile of the con- 
servative French diplomat who was Secretary- 
General of the League of Nations during the 
critical years which led to World War II and 
analyzes the role Avenol played in hastening dis- 
aster. (Yale University Press, $10.00) 



Sick Friends by Ivan Gold '53 is an easy-reading 
novel about a doomed love affair between a bald¬ 
ing playboy-writer and an earthy American- 
Armenian girl. Both lovers recognize their need 
for each other but are unable to invest the faith 
needed for lasting commitment. (E. P. Dutton, 
$6.95) 


99 


At the Edge by Michael Goldman '53 is a volume 
of artful brooding poems which vary in form from 
epigrams to long finely-wrought interweaves of 
verse and prose, and which vary in subject from 
the topical to the deeply personal. (Macmillan, 
$4.95) 


The Cult of the Ego by Eugene Goodheart '53 
analyzes spirit emancipation in fictional artist- 
heroes drawn by nine writers from Rousseau to 
Joyce, and argues that the authors' failures to 
master the ego confusion they portray has helped 
unleash the seeds of modern nihilism. (University 
of Chicago Press, $6.95) 


My Year in the White House Doghouse by Ralph 
Schoenstein '53 reveals with biting humor the tale 
of the author's tribulations in attempting to write 
a book about LBJ's best friends, a beagle and a 
collie. Part of his original manuscript as censored 
by Lady Bird's press secretary, Liz Carpenter, is 
included. (David White, $4.95) 


Poems and Texts assembled by Serge Ca vronsky 
'54 is an anthology of contemporary French poems, 
translations, and interviews with philosopher- 
poets: Ponge, follain, Cuillevic, Frenaud, Bonne- 
foy, Du Bouchet, Roche, and Pleynet, whose 
work - influenced by the thinking of Marx, Levi- 
Strauss and others - reflects some of the radical 
changes which are occurring in France's cultural 
and intellectual life today. (October House, $7.50, 
cloth; $2.95, paper) 

Rejoice by Samuel Astrachan '55 parabolizes a 
suburban lawyer's quest for identity and a mean¬ 
ingful existence, which takes him from his Long 
Island home to France, and finally to a small Greek 
island where a miracle takes place. (Dial Press, 
$4.95) 


The Old Northwest edited by Harry N. Scheiber 
'55 is a collection of essays treating the develop¬ 
ment of the old northwest territory (Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in the frontier 
and post frontier stages, 1797-1910. (University of 
Nebraska Press, $7.95, cloth; $3.25, paper) 


Twentieth Century Pittsburgh by Roy Lubove '56 
examines and evaluates this city's post-World War 
II urban reforms, which were initiated and directed 
largely by Pittsburgh's business and professional 
elite, and reflect their limited concerns. (John 
Wiley & Sons, $7.95, cloth; $3.95, paper) 


Andreas Vesalius: Father of Modern Anatomy by 

Jerome Tarshis '57 is a biography of the famous 
sixteenth century physician who quietly revolu¬ 
tionized medicine by publishing the first anatomy 
tracts based on observation - the result of years 
of publicly and privately dissecting animal and 
sometimes stolen human bodies. For young adults. 
(Dial Press, $3.95) 


Corky's Brother by Jay Neugeboren '59 is a collec¬ 
tion of short stories dealing mainly with New York 
boys: Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish, and full 
of urban tension, sidewalk pathos, and quiet 
humor. (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $5.95) 




Fractions by Andrew Field '60 is a novel which 
perceives and dissects the irony, pretense, and 
half-knowledge permeating the lives of a young 
literary critic and his wife. (Simon and Schuster, 
$4.95) 


Education in the Twenty-First Century edited by 
Arnold Spinner and Herbert London '60 is a 
fascinating collection of papers first presented at a 
symposium sponsored by New York University. 
Discussed are such topics as home plug-in com¬ 
puterized education, genetic control and child 
development, sex education for children who will 
be physically mature in their pre-teens, and new 
creative approaches in all areas of instruction. (In¬ 
terstate Printers & Publishers, paperback) 

John Morley at the India Office, 1905-1910, by 

Stephen E. Koss '62 reassesses the ideology of the 
British Liberal theorist and author and later Indian 
Secretary who was accused of betraying his own 
principles in dashing Indian Nationalist hopes. 
Koss absolves Morley of charges of ideological 
treachery by concluding that he was a consistent 
disciple of Gladstonian liberalism —a liberalism 
which did not envision its export to non-European 
societies. (Yale University Press, $8.50) 

The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer by Barry 
H. Leeds '62 contends that Mailer's two major 
themes are social ills and the plight of the indi¬ 
vidual in contemporary society, and that in the 
course of 20 years the writer has grown increas¬ 
ingly effective in presenting these concerns to the 
reader. This first full length study of Norman 
Mailer's work also hazards answers as to why 
Mailer has not yet written the second great novel 
which has long been expected of him. (New York 
University Press, $6.95) 

War Is Heaven! by Keith Maho '63 piercingly ex¬ 
amines the significance of human life and death 
in a tale of American jungle-patrol soldiers en¬ 
gaged in helping to crush a guerrilla insurrection 
in a fictional South American republic. (Double¬ 
day, $5.95) 


Great Balls of Fire by Ron Padgett '64 is a varied 
volume of poetry which includes quiet impres¬ 
sionistic verses, vivid city poems, and nonsense 
lyrics drawn with a strong comic sense. (Holt, 
Rinehart and Winston, $5.95, cloth; $3.50, paper) 


Rock 'n Roll Trivia by Edwin Goodgold '65 and 
Dan Carl insky '65 challenges all pop song addicts, 
big beat boppers, mellowed juke box fanatics, 
and trivia afficianados by providing them with over 
400 questions and answers about vintage rock 
saints and discs. (Popular Library, $.60) 


The Tales of Hoffman edited by Mark Levine '66 
George McNamee, and Daniel Greenberg docu¬ 
ments the courtroom confrontations of the trial of 
the Chicago Eight, later Seven, in a 320-page con¬ 
densed version of the official 22,000-page trial 
transcript. Dwight MacDonald introduces this col¬ 
lection of courtroom scenes and the volume in¬ 
cludes illustrations of the defendants, attorneys, 
and judge. (Bantam, $1.50) 


The High School Revolutionaries edited by Marc 
Libarle and Tom Seligson '68 is a collection of 
narratives by disaffected high school students 
across the country describing the intolerable con¬ 
ditions they are discovering in their schools and 
lives. Selections include "My Teacher is a Racist," 
by a Black girl honors-student; "Jewing Down 
South," by a North Carolina boy; and "Andover: 
Even the Best are Bad," by a disenchanted young 
Philadelphian. (Random House, $6.95) 


100 












Obituaries 


1896 Nathan I. Bijur 

December 5, 1969 

Herman F. Senfter 

July 20, 1966 

1898 Lewis Einstein 
Charles Machen 

July 28, 1969 

1899 Lawrence M. Simonson 

January 14, 1970 

1900 William M. Morgan 

October 21,1969 

1901 George Adams 
William Van Cise 

November 16,1969 

1902 John K. Fitch 
July 6,1969 
Chapman Ropes 
Charles W. Kennedy 

July 14, 1969 

1903 Walter Frank 
December 28,1969 
Albert B. Garcelon 
September 6,1969 
William F. Hills 
July 1969 
Edward K. Judd 
December 1969 
Harry C. Wilmot 
December 5,1968 

1904 Albert L. Kahn 

1905 Mervin E. Lyle 

May 1969 

1906 Frederic E. Gilbert 

October 3,1969 
Carl Haner 
October 24, 1969 

1909 Albert L. Baum 
November 15, 1969 
Andrew M. Child 
Herman L. Heide 
Edgar J. Kates 
September 1968 

1910 G. Hinman Barrett 
August 27, 1969 
John B. Brittain 
January 10,1970 
Jonathan Force 
April 18, 1969 
Ernest V. Frerichs 
November 29,1969 
Royce Paddock 
November 5, 1969 
Ralph L. Roeder 
October 22,1969 
Leslie S. Webster 

1911 Max Frank 

September 27,1969 

Herbert S. Goldstein 

January 2,1970 

1912 Benjamin Bernstein 

May 20, 1969 

1913 Harold W. Crandall 

May 5,1963 

Andrew J. Gahagan 

October 12, 1969 


Phillips Houghton 

December 17,1969 
James O. Parsons 
August 25, 1969 
Elmer Roberts 
January 17,1970 

1914 Guy A. Cheney 
August 28,1969 
George M. Dawson 
July 29, 1969 
Cornelius W. Hearn 
April 15,1969 
Charles M. Knapp 
March 15,1969 
Michel M. Konarski 
February 20,1970 
Garibaldi Laguardia 
November 19,1969 
John W. Love 
October 18,1969 
George B. Murphy 
September 11,1969 
Dwight Tenney 
January 26, 1970 
Samuel H. Vallance 
August 13, 1969 
James L. Wilson 
October 18,1969 

1915 Douglas L. Dunbar 
July 26, 1969 
Edward D. Ettinger 
January 18, 1969 
Philip W. Russ 
Samuel C. Spalding 
January 23, 1970 
Joseph Talamo 
January 20, 1970 

J. Julian Tashof 
December 31,1968 

1916 Kimball C. Atwood, Jr. 
June 1969 

Morris Berick 
December 1969 
William H. Corbett 
May 23, 1966 
Wendell G. Fogg 
February 25, 1970 
Sidney M. Kraus 
Thomas H. Ormsbee 
August 4, 1969 
Henry B. Smith 
December 1965 
Frederick T. Van Auken 

1917 Clarance R. Halter 

July 29, 1969 
Sarsfield J. Sheridan 
December 25,1969 
Meyer M. Stone 

February 27, 1970 

1918 Paul S. Dreux 
April 4, 1969 
Samuel Gaines 
October 18,1969 
Robert K. Lippmann 
June 8,1969 
Roland L. Loiseaux 
November 11,1969 
Payton W. Spence 
January 5,1969 


Francis R. Toombs 

February 14, 1970 

1919 M. Taylor Bard 
September 3, 1969 
Luther B. Beck 
John F. Condon 
October 7,1969 
Julius H. Golding 
October 19, 1969 
Roberto Gonzales 
James D. Herbert 
March 3,1970 
Joseph M. Rothschild 
July 27,1969 

1920 Francis M. Brady 
October 26, 1969 
Francis J. Canapary 

July 18, 1969 

1921 Denzil Bagster-Collins 
October 1, 1969 
George R. Brighton 
Charles B. C. Carey 
January 24,1970 
Sidney Franklin 

June 29, 1969 
Roswell H. Nye 
May 30, 1969 

1922 Milton K. Breslauer 
George J. Hirsch 
November 22,1969 
Morrell S. Lockhart 
March 2,1970 
Samuel C. Perlow 

1923 George Adams 
September 23, 1969 
Lenwood H. Bowman 
August 15,1969 
Francis J. Brennan 
Samuel Kaplan 

June 20, 1969 
Frank P. Luongo 
June 28, 1969 
Nathaniel H. Mandelker 
April 1966 
Kenneth K. Mills 
Ralph B. Magraw 
September 10,1969 
Joseph R. Margulies 
August 5, 1969 
Burton B. Mazur 
January 11,1970 
Powell M. Rhea 
August 1969 
Richard Ronder 
January 19,1970 
Marcus A. Stone 
William H. Wright 
Theodore V. Zavatt 
June 1969 

1924 James L. Anderson 
November 20,1969 
Frederick H. Fechtig 
November 9,1969 
Arthur Franzen 
October 18,1969 
William T. Gibb 
May 10,1969 


David H. Hausman 
December 23, 1968 
Bernard B. Hoffman 
E. Leroy Johnson 
Albert S. Mayo 
October 5, 1969 
Hyman B. Warshall 
July 23, 1969 

1925 James K. Bradley 
June 25,1969 
Albert S. Hollander 
December 12, 1969 
Ervin G. Kenyon 
Lisle Small 
December 7,1969 
Herbert Spurway 
January 1,1970 
Miles Tierney 
April 1969 
Herman Winter 
October 29, 1969 

1926 Bruce E. Grunden 

May 6, 1969 

Charles G. Lockwood 

December 24, 1969 

1927 Maurice Halpern 

1928 Paul Haun 

October 15,1969 

Walter K. Pick 
Frederick Ray, Jr. 
August 1963 
William U. Rixford 
August 19,1969 
Francis B. Stoddert 
October 1, 1969 
Richard T. Wilbur 
May 6,1969 

1929 Alexander S. Bing 

' November 12,1969 

William T. Childs, Jr. 

January 3,1968 

1930 Harry T. Tietneberg 

April 6, 1967 

Edmond R. Zaglio 

January 9,1970 

1931 Charles J. Frehner 
February 12, 1970 
Nathan B. Hirschfeld 
November 8,1969 
Leon McMinn 
August 21, 1969 
John Penek 
December 30, 1969 
Herman H. Ridder 
September 16,1969 
Carl A. Ronne 
June 6,1969 

John Webb 
August 4, 1969 
Donald E. Williamson 
June 9,1969 

1932 Herman Anfanger 
January 5,1970 
Riutaro Matsushita 
September 8, 1969 
Donald McNaughton 
December 15,1969 


101 









1933 Frederic P. Bartlett 

January 10,1970 

Bartley M. Howley 
May 20,1969 
Arthur A. Jacobsen 
Thomas A. McKay 
July 23, 1969 
Pietro Soldano 
March 13, 1970 

1934 James B. Lackey, Jr. 

June 1969 

Alexander E. Reidell 

1935 Roger C. R. Miller 
Mario E. Sciorsci 
June 28, 1969 
Edwin C. Steinach, Jr. 

May 2,1969 

1936 Peter M. Brown 
Richard A. Johnson 

August 1, 1969 

1937 Carl L. Fabbroni 

September 19,1968 

1938 Arthur T. Rowe, Jr. 

October 27, 1969 

1939 Charles L. Grimm 
June 24, 1969 
Hilary H. Holmes 

January 3,1970 

1940 Frederick E. Robin 

August 14, 1969 

1942 Ralph L. Mezger 

January 5, 1969 

Albert C. Sherwin 

July 14, 1969 
John S. Sjostrom 

October 15, 1969 

1943 George W. Biow 

October 28, 1968 

1944 Stephen Birch 

February 19, 1970 

Neil E. Ganz 

1945 George R. Landwehr 
November 15,1969 
Laurence S. Maynard 
July 18,1969 

John N. Rabiecki 

1946 William N. Kanehann, Jr. 

1947 Philip Keppler, Jr. 

January 29,1970 

1948 Peter Ceike 

October 13,1969 
Thomas J. Seedorff 

December 20, 1969 

1949 Edwin K. Catchell 
September 29, 1969 
Robert A. Lomberg 
December 4,1969 
Millard C. Sappington 
August 18, 1969 

1955 Harold P. Mitrani 

1958 Essam M. Alireza 

December 25, 1969 

1959 Howard R. Weisz 

July 1969 

1963 Edward P. Katz 

1966 William A. M. Von Muffling 

1969 Stephen M. Fhrenber 

August 18,1969 
Mark Herman 
December 18, 1969 

1970 Robert E. Ratermann 

April 7,1970 


Harold Korn '01, a John Jay Associate and past 
director of the New York State Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, who travelled abroad during the fifties on 
many missions for the American Association for 
the United Nations. Died July 7, 1969. 

Oscar R. Houston '04, specialist in Admiralty Law 
and mountaineer, who represented cargo inter¬ 
ests in the disasters of the Titanic, Lusitania, and 
Andrea Doria, and who in 1950 climbed the 
southern slopes of Mount Everest and planned 
the route by which later parties reached the 
summit. Died December 1969. 

Benjamin M. Kaye '05, founder of the law firm of 
Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler in New 
York City, and author of several successful plays 
including ''She Didn't Say No," "The Curtain 
Rises," and "On Stage." Speaking of the last 
play, Brooks Atkinson said Mr. Kaye "writes 
better than Pirandello because he and his actors 
have managed to make themselves understood." 
Died March 25, 1970. 

Alexander Holtzoff 08, the conservative and con¬ 
troversial U.S. district judge for Washington, 
D. C. who advocated "the shock and jolt" of 
prison sentences for youthful offenders and who 
heard motions in such prominent cases as the 
prosecution of Bobby Baker and the libel suit by 
Senator Thomas Dodd against columnists Drew 
Pearson and Jack Anderson. Died September 
1969. 

Bernard A. Rosenblatt, 08, a one-time New York 
City magistrate and ardent Zionist for over 60 
years, was an assistant to Felix Frankfurter at the 
Versailles Peace Conference, and the first Ameri¬ 
can representative on the World Zionist Execu¬ 
tive in Jerusalem in 1921. He pioneered the 
selling of bonds for Palestine, the development 
of business enterprises in Israel, and authored 
several books concerning the establishment of 
the modern Hebrew nation. Died October 14, 
1969. 

Mortimer Brenner '10, Brooklyn attorney and civic 
leader, served as a county committeeman, was a 
member of the Executive Committee of the 
Synagogue Council of America, and held many 
other significant volunteer posts. Died July 1, 
1969. 

George W. Cronyn '10, writer and teacher who 
during the Depression served as associate di¬ 
rector of the Federal Writers Project, and at vari¬ 
ous times was a cowpuncher in New Mexico, 
teacher at the University of Montana, and editor 
with the U.S. Information Agency. He was the 
author of various books including an anthology 
of Indian chants and a best-selling novel in 1934, 
Fool of Venus. Died May 9, 1969. 

Donald V. Lowe '11, Alumni Class President, was 
Chairman of the Board of the Lowe Paper Com¬ 
pany at the time of his death. He was a former 
chairman of the Port of New York Authority and 
Delegate to the United Nations Commission on 
Transport and Communication. Died December 
10, 1969. 

Roscoe Ingalls '12, a Wall Street leader, was a 
former governor of the New York Stock Exchange 
and a former president of the Association of 
Stock Exchange Firms. A member of the College 
Council, he was one of Columbia's most devoted 
fund raisers, and served as a trustee of the uni¬ 
versity from 1956 to 1962. Died November 21, 
1969. 


Roscoe Ingalls '12 



Alfred Sturtevant '12, winner of a National Medal 
of Science in 1968 for his work in genetics, was 
the first scientist to map the location of chromo¬ 
somes of the genes associated with particular 
inherited characteristics. He also discovered that 
the arrangements of blocks of genes varies in 
different species, and used this finding to trace 
the evolution of species. Died April 6, 1970. 

Archibald Campbell Denison '17, founder of the 
Department of Architecture at Ohio University 
and author of America's Maritime History. Died 
January 20, 1970. 

Wilferd May '19, a former foreign correspondent 
specializing in economic affairs for The New 
York Times and The London Financial Times, also 
served as an economic expert for the Securities 
and Exchange Commission in 1935 and 1936. At 
various times he was a faculty member of Co¬ 
lumbia, the London School of Economics and 
the New School of Social Research. Died Novem¬ 
ber 12, 1969. 

Henry Profitt '19, counsel for the University and 
a specialist in banking and real estate law. Active 
in College and Law School affairs, he received a 
University Alumni Federation medal in 1944, 
served as president of the Law School Alumni 
Association from 1951 to 1953, and as a Univer¬ 
sity trustee from 1955 to 1959. Died November 
1, 1969. 


Henry Proffitt '19 



Schuyler Wallace '19 


Schuyler C. Wallace '19, former dean of the School 
of International Affairs, director of Columbia 
University Press, and author of several political 
studies. Died July 9, 1969. 

Arthur Wiesenberger '19, a financial advisor to 
royalty and business, was a pioneer in the field 
of mutual funds, and as a senior partner of the 
New York firm bearing his name introduced 
Madison Avenue advertising techniques to Wall 
Street. Died January 12, 1970. 

Samuel West '20, former governor of the New 
York Stock Exchange who received the Columbia 
Alumni award in 1958. Died October 22,1969. 

Samuel Rothbard '21, leading New Jersey labor at¬ 
torney, who at one time or another represented 
almost all the unions active in his area, often in 
fierce fights against staid political leaders. Died 
July 12, 1969. 


102 









Frank Tannenbaum '21 


Frank Tannenbaum '21, Director of University Sem¬ 
inars for Columbia, was a John Jay Associate and 
an expert in many areas of the social sciences. 
He was the author of several books including 
Crime and the Community, Ten Keys to Latin 
America, and The Balance of Power in Society 
which appeared last year. Died June 1, 1969. 

Leroy Lance '22, a former editor of the Wall Street 
journal and real estate broker who served as 
director of the Columbia Alumni Federation and 
was awarded the Columbia University Distin¬ 
guished Service Medal for his fund-raising ef¬ 
forts. Died August 29, 1969. 

Corey Hitchcock Ford '23, sportsman, humorist and 
author of more than 30 books and 500 magazine 
articles. As a humorist he believed in comedy 
bigger than life and as a satirist he took on 
William Faulkner, John Galsworthy and Ernest 
Hemmingway, the latter in a well known story 
called "Corto y Derecho" which featured Hem¬ 
mingway fighting and dryly conversing with a 
bull. Ford was in on the founding of The New 
Yorker, creator of the Rover Boys books, and 
an editor and columnist for Field and Stream 
magazine at the time of his death. Died July 27, 
1969. 


Corey Ford '23 




Guy Endore '24 


Guy Endore '24, author of numerous books includ¬ 
ing King of Paris (a novel about Dumas p6re), 
Satan's Saint, and Synanon (the story of the 
unique communal center for curing dope ad¬ 
dicts). Died February 12, 1970. 


Edwin Bernard Matzke '24 was a faculty member 
at Columbia for over 40 years and Chairman of 
the Biological Sciences Department until 1967. 
A member of the Board of Managers of the New 
York Botanical Garden, he wrote frequently on 
botanical subjects in encyclopedias and journals. 
Died September 28, 1969. 

Jack Weinstock '26, medical director of the United 
States Life Insurance Company and noted urolo¬ 
gist, was co-author of the Broadway musical, 
“How to Succeed in Business Without Really 
Trying" which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and 
Drama Critics Award. Died May 23, 1969. 

Edward Lumsden '29, former director of Latin 
American operations for Time-Life and consult¬ 
ant and contributor to Fortune magazine and The 
London Financial Times. Died December 21, 
1969. 

Arthur Shapiro '30 was one of the country's lead¬ 
ing investigators into the meanings of dreams 
and origins of sleep. As a pioneer in psycho¬ 
physiology he used computers, instruments, and 
scientific methods to establish correlations be¬ 
tween the mind and body and to probe the 
causes of dreams, insomnia, and psychosomatic 
disturbances. At the time of his death he was a 
professor at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadel¬ 
phia and medical director of Investors Overseas 
Services in Geneva. Died September 29, 1969. 

Frederic P. Bartlett '33, diplomat, who was the first 
United States ambassador to the Malagasy Re¬ 
public and who retired in 1964 as director of the 
Bureau of West African Affairs in the State De¬ 
partment. Died January 10, 1970. 

Leon Frechtel '33 was a member of the Depart¬ 
ment of Justice who served as one of the two 
civilian prosecutors at the Nuremberg War 
Crimes Trials. Afterwards, in 1947, he abandoned 
legal practice to head the Harry Frechtel Com¬ 
pany, an apparel concern founded by his father. 
Died February 19, 1970. 


Erwin Henry Leiwant '41, owner of a Jersey City 
insurance brokerage firm bearing his name, class 
treasurer, and recipient of a John Jay award. 
Died June 30, 1969. 

Jack Kerouac '44, beatnik bard who is credited 
with having bestowed the name "beat" (in the 
sense of beatific) upon the roving drop-outs of 
the fifties, and author of many semibiographical 
best sellers, the most universally known of 
which is On the Road. Died October 21, 1969. 

Robert H. Reid '46, an educational consultant in 
Washington, D.C. and former director of George 
Mason College had also been a United States 
representative to a seminar on human rights in 
the Netherlands and a founding member of the 
American Council on NATO. Died February 9, 
1970. 

William Cumming '50, a Columbia psychology 
professor, was best known by students for teach¬ 
ing introductory psychology from a behavioral 
viewpoint which he extended to many problems 
in modern psychology. Dr. Cumming was espe¬ 
cially concerned with perceptual processes of 
discrimination in animals, and in one experiment 
he trained pigeons to inspect transistors. Died 
January 8, 1970. 

Theodore T. Gold '68, former vice-chairman of the 
University S.D.S. chapter, killed in an explosion 
at 18 West 11th Street, New York City. March 6, 
1970. 

John T. Norton, Jr. '68, Navy Ensign aboard the 
USS Frank E. Evans, missing at sea and presumed 
dead after his destroyer was cut in half by the 
Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne during 
SEATO training exercises in the South Pacific. 
June 1969. 



103 

















No News from My Lai 

A Visit to a Haunted Place 


By Arnold Abrams 


Life in Song My is largely back to 
normal now, free of the turmoil cre¬ 
ated late last year by hordes of cor¬ 
respondents and public officials press¬ 
ing for facts most villagers would pre¬ 
fer to forget. The story has been 
written and sent around the world. 
There is no longer any news here, 
for all this village has to offer is a 
pocket of burned-out ruins and a 
legacy of horror. 

The horror of My Lai 4, where 
an unknown number of Vietnamese 
civilians were massacred by a com¬ 
pany of American troops, lies aban¬ 
doned in marshy lowlands half a mile 
from Song My's refugee camp. It is a 
ghost site whose former inhabitants 
are either buried or scattered, trying 
to reshape shattered lives. Forces of 
man and nature, running amuck, have 
reduced My Lai 4 to piles of black¬ 
ened bricks overrun by jungle foliage. 
But the orgy of violence which dev¬ 
astated this place did not purge it of 
the poison between American sol¬ 
diers and Vietnamese civilians. Hate 
still has a home here. 

The U.S. Army's America! Division 
still operates in this region, as it did 
in March 1968, when Company C of 
the First Battalion, 20th Infantry, ap¬ 
plied its unique brand of pacification 
to My Lai 4. But American army per¬ 
sonnel don't have sole responsibility 
for Song My any more. They have 
been supplemented by U.S. Marines 
who work with South Vietnamese ir¬ 
regular-. in what is called a "combined 


action platoon." 

Changing troop assignments, 
however, has not solved any prob¬ 
lems at Song My, a village complex 
of six hamlets named My Lai, 350 
miles northeast of Saigon. The 48th 
Local Force Battalion, a crack con¬ 
tingent of Vietcong and North Viet¬ 
namese regulars, still dominates this 
part of the Quang Ngai province; the 
marines, under constant pressure, still 
harbor their army predecessors' en¬ 
mity toward the populace; the vil¬ 
lagers still are hostile and implacable. 

This has always been forbidding 
territory with a rebellious history, 
seemingly destined to remain for¬ 
ever insecure. It had to be cordoned 
off by special troop detachments, 
which lost five men to booby traps 
before American army investigators 
could work in safety. But on-the- 
scene probing ended several weeks 
ago and the security detachments 
have departed, leaving Song My as 
sinister as ever. 

The weather at this time of year 
is foul, befitting a village whose his¬ 
tory is so grim. It is the rainy season, 
constantly cloudy and cold, and the 
land is a morass of mud. The marines 
stationed in Song My subsist on C- 
rations and huddle in soggy tents. Re¬ 
maining dry or clean is out of the 
question. Their sole concerns are car¬ 
ing for weapons and staying alive. 
Winning the villagers' hearts and 
minds is a concept only outsiders have 
the luxury of contemplating. 


Twelve marines originally were 
assigned here in early December; 
only nine were left at month's end. 
They were particularly edgy. One of 
their compatriots had been killed and 
another seriously wounded the pre¬ 
vious day, when an allied patrol 
blundered into an enemy ambush. 
"We spotted a couple of dinks and 
took after them," said Sergeant Mil- 
ton Vasquez, the platoon commander, 
using the idiom American troops 
commonly employ to describe Viet¬ 
namese, North or South. "We ran 
smack into a bunch of their pals in 
the bushes. They pumped a whole 
load of stuff into us before we could 
pull back. Cost us two good men." 

Other marines had gathered 
around listening to Vasquez, patrol 
leader, six-year veteran and unit elder 
at 27. One of them gestured toward 
huts in Song My's refugee settlement, 
some of which are inhabited by for¬ 
mer My Lai 4 residents. "Those god¬ 
damned dinks knew what was coming 
off out there," he said. "Fat chance, 
though of them telling us." 

None of the marines was here in 
1968 but they were familiar with press 
accounts of the My Lai massacre. They 
believed those accounts. "The same 
thing could have happened here yes¬ 
terday," said Pfc. Len Nixon, 21. "It's 
a good thing no dinks came to bother 
us after the patrol. We lost a good 
buddy, and it was their friends out 
there that got him." 

Then they began to let it all out, 


104 




all the pent-up prejudices, fears and 
frustrations produced by continual 
harassment from enemy forces and 
non-cooperation from hostile civi¬ 
lians. As far as these Americans were 
concerned, the two groups are one 
and the same. “We try to help these 
dinks," said Nixon, a husky rifleman 
who claims no familial ties with his 
commander-in-chief. “We provide se¬ 
curity, give them food, treat them nice. 
Then they turn around and kick us in 
the teeth. When we came back from 
that patrol yesterday, we couldn't 
stand to look at them." 

Frank Johnson took over. He 
spoke softly, slowly, as if measuring 
the gravity of his words. “They're 
going to prosecute Cal ley," he said, 
referring to Lieutenant William L. 
Calley, the former platoon leader 
charged with the murder of more 
than 100 civilians in My Lai 4. “Frank¬ 
ly, I think they should give the guy a 
medal." A chorus of assent came from 
his companions. 

Johnson, a bespectacled, 22-year- 
old medic with three years' military 
service, went on to describe life in 
Song My. He spoke bitterly of a land 
laced with traps, and of a populace 
which either.sets the traps or knows 
about them — and allows American 
troops to be maimed by them. “What 
else can you do after a while but 
want to take revenge?" he said. “None 
of us knows exactly what happened 
here in 1968, but we sure as hell un¬ 
derstand it." 

Vasquez's turn again, this time to 
tell of the constant pressure and lack 
of security in Song My. “They're all 
around us," the platoon commander 
said. “You probably passed a dozen 
VC along the road in coming here. 
By day they're farmers, nice innocent 
shit-shovelers. By night they're killers 
—damn good ones too. Night attacks, 
sniping, mortaring, booby traps. We 
get up each day wondering whose 
turn it will be today." 

Then it was time to move out. 
Twice a day the unit goes on patrol, 
its primary defense against being 
overrun. My Lai 4 was the object of 
this sweep. Beneath the hamlet's 
ruined homes, Vasquez explained, 
was an intricate network of well- 
built bunkers still used occasionally 
by the enemy as a rendezvous. 


It was a tense walk in the rain. 
The half-mile hike between camp and 
hamlet was a sniper's paradise: in the 
open and surrounded by high grass, 
rippling paddies, thick treelines. The 
pitted dirt road, moreover, was a po¬ 
tential honeycomb of concealed 
mines and other death-dealing de¬ 
vices: the kind of road you walk in 
nightmares. 

The marines looked formidable. 
They were draped in bandoliers of 
ammunition and armed with M-16 
automatic rifles, machine guns and 
grenade launchers. But they moved 
with taut measured steps, careful to 
stay in formation, constantly scanning 
the watery paddies. They knew how 
quickly routine patrols could explode 
into violence and death. Their allies, 
however, were something else. 

The approximately 30 South Viet¬ 
namese soldiers, regional force troops 
comprising the rest of the platoon, 
swaggered along. They spoke loudly, 
broke formation, carried their weap¬ 
ons with gunmen's bravado. “They're 
real tigers in the daytime, these 
dinks," Vasquez remarked. “It's dif¬ 
ferent at night though. When it's dark, 
you practically have to ram a bayonet 
up their rear ends before they'll move 
out. Real tigers." 

As the patrol approached My Lai 
4, shrouded in thick shrubbery about 
50 yards from the road, a volley of 
small arms fire suddenly sounded. No¬ 
body ducked. The South Vietnamese 
were doing all the firing, mostly with 
weapons pointed skyward. “That's 
just in case there are any VC in there," 
Vasquez explained. “The dinks want 
to give them plenty of warning that 
we're coming." 

The platoon advanced without in¬ 
cident to the hamlet's outer edge, 
marked by a pile of broken bricks, the 
hulk of a once-fine home. All was 
peaceful. It seemed inconceivable 
that this deserted patch of decaying 
ruins could be the object of inter¬ 
national infamy. There were no blood¬ 
stains, no bodies, no screams: only 
the suggestion. 

Then a strange thing happened. 
It started with the South Vietnamese. 
Like a bunch of boisterous school¬ 
boys, they charged with gay abandon 
through the hamlet. They kicked at 
bricks, pounded still-standing walls, 


fired weapons and set fires—whooping 
all the while at the top of their lungs. 

At first, the marines laughed con¬ 
temptuously at their allies' antics. 
Then something snapped. Suddenly, 
they started to follow suit. Without 
a word, veteran marines also began 
rushing about, bent on destruction. 
They too stomped on bricks, toppled 
walls, attacked shells of houses and 
set fire to straw-thatched structures. 
But there was nothing schoolboyish 
about the marines' manner. They did 
not whoop it up. They moved with 
quiet fury. 

The effect was startling. Once 
again, My Lai 4 was wracked by sounds 
of death and destruction: a thrashing 
and pounding and firing of weapons. 
The smell of smoke and gunfire 
tainted the air and tormented the 
lungs. It was a scene of pure catharsis. 
Venting their hate and frustration, the 
marines in their minds were avenging 
their buddies, recreating what had 
happened here once before. If, amid 
that frenzy, any Vietnamese civilians 
had been unearthed from the ruins, 
they might have been slaughtered on 
the spot. 

It lasted about ten minutes. After¬ 
ward, the marines rested in the re¬ 
mains of a front yard, smouldering 
straw scattered about them in the 
foliage. “We're going to level this 
place," Sgt. Vasquez said. “That will 
keep the VC from using it." The 
reasoning was so sound, the sergeant 
seemed genuinely surprised when 
asked if he had seen anything strange 
about the way his men had started the 
job. “They were just clearing the 
place," he said. “I don't think they 
were thinking of anything." 

Ironically, the South Vietnamese 
troops, sitting apart from the Amer¬ 
icans, professed total ignorance about 
the hamlet's history. They had heard 
nothing about any massacre in My 
Lai 4, they told an interpreter; they 
knew nothing about the people who 
had lived—and died—here. This once 
had been a VC hamlet, they said, and 
whatever had happened here—well, 
that's what happens to VC hamlets. 

Then Vasquez ordered the pla¬ 
toon to its feet and headed back. 
“Negative contact," he radioed to his 
superiors. Another day had passed, 
and there was no news from My Lai 4. 


Arnold Abrams '61, former Spectator managing editor and Newsday reporter, is presently a freelancer living in 
Hong Kong. This article, which was written late last winter, is reprinted from the Far Eastern Economic Review. 
The author has traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia, and has paid a personal visit to the scene of the 
much-publicized slayings. 








„ ..Columbia 
College 
Today 

Room 336 • 632 West 125th Street 
New York, New York 10027 

Address Correction Requested 


Non-Profit Organization 
U.S. Postage 

PAID 

New York, N.Y. 
PERMIT NO. 3593 



HALLMARK OF A GENERATION: Columbia sophomore Andrew Ames took this 
photograph at a New Haven rally in support of the Black Panthers. 

' 








FALL 1970 



WILLIAM McCILL: 

THE FINDING OF THE PRESIDENT 

























COLUMBIA NEEDS YOU! 


19th Annual Columbia College Fund 






It is true, if banal, to say that President William McGill faces 
awesome problems, not of his own making. Just as he didn't 
create them, he doesn't always have a free hand in dealing with 
them, especially when they originate outside the University. 

Consider, for example, the recently-imposed guidelines for 
political activity on campus, promulgated by the President after 
approval by the Board of Trustees. These guidelines provide, in 
essence, that political groups which use University facilities will 
have to pay for them. 

It may be, of course, that the President believes that such 
rules are inherently sound, and would have called for their imple¬ 
mentation if there were no outside pressures whatsoever. That is 
beside the point. The President was not free to act as if there 
were no outside pressures, because there were plenty of these, 
and they so narrowed his options as to leave him with no mean¬ 
ingful choice. The pressures derive from thinly-disguised warn¬ 
ings that Columbia will forfeit its tax-exempt status if it permits 
the free use of its facilities for partisan purposes. 


Now, the law does prohibit tax-exempt institutions from be¬ 
coming involved in politics. And no-one suggests that the en¬ 
forcement of laws is repressive per se. But selective enforcement 
is another matter. For decades, organizations such as the Young 
Democrats and Young Republicans used University facilities, 
without charge, to advance causes which were highly partisan 
indeed, and there were no rumblings then. Why the sudden 
solicitude for the letter of the law? 

Manifestly, the guidelines will operate with particular harsh¬ 
ness against splinter groups, those with small memberships and 
limited funds. Where, for example, will the Young Socialists ob¬ 
tain the nearly $250 needed to rent out McMillan Theater, or even 
the $58.80 required for Harkness? From Patrick J. Frawley? From H. 
L. Hunt? True, if an especially famous speaker is to be featured, 
the group can charge admission. But often the purpose of meet¬ 
ings is to recruit new followers from the mildly curious among 
the audience. How many of these will pay the price of a ticket? 

It may or may not be desirable for such groups to increase 
their membership rolls. That is not the issue. The issue is that the 
denial of facilities to recruit and propagandize lawfully triggers 
precisely the sort of violent response which moderates fear. 

Our students are not naive. They will not blame President 
McGill for the guidelines, for they know whence the pressures 
come. They also know that the zealous calls for letter-perfect 
law-enforcement date back to the radical political activities which 
swept the campuses last May, and they are too intelligent not to 
perceive the connection. How can one expect them to respect the 
law, when they see legal instruments used so cynically? Such 
practices reinforce the suspicions of the young, who believe that 
dissent will be countenanced only as long as it is “responsible" — 
which is to say, as long as it does not question the basic principles 
of American policy, or else is carried on in such a way that there 
is no chance of its being effective. 

MBM 


Please do not tell Columbia College Today of changes in your mailing address. 

Write instead to Alumni Record Center, 336 Prentis, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027. 


„ ..Columbia 
College 

Today 

ALUMNI ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

EDITOR Martin B. Margulies '61 Ray Robinson - 41 chairman 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR llene Barth Arthur Rothstein '35 

ART DIRECTOR C. Gordon Chapman ^^n" 

SPORTS EDITOR Steve Singer'64 Walter Wager'44 

ALUMNI EDITOR Mark Jaffe '70 Byron Z> ° bel1 ' 47 ,_ . 

John McDermott 54 

Published by Columbia College 

Columbia University 

New York, N. Y. 10027 
for 

Alumni and Friends of Columbia College 

Address all editorial communications to: 
Columbia College Today 

400 West 118th Street 

New York, N.Y. 10027 

Telephone (212) 280-3701 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE 
founded in 1754 

is the undergraduate liberal arts college 
of 2,700 men in 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

IN THIS ISSUE 

Around the Quads . 2 

William McGill: The Finding of the President. 26 

House on the Hill . 36 

Roar Lion Roar. 40 

Once Upon a Time. 48 

Dean of Capitol Hill . 52 

Talk of the Alumni . 56 

King's College goes a-Begging. 60 

Alumni Authors . 65 

Obituaries. 67 

Everyone's Gone Crazy. 69 

Letters . 73 

COVER DRAWING BY NANCY GRILIKHES 



























FRESHMAN WEEK 


Around the 
Quads 


The beanies were gone, the 
dreary, formal welcoming speeches 
largely absent from the program. But 
facial expressions, reflecting bewilder¬ 
ment, anticipation, and apprehension, 
were the same as ever when some 725 
freshmen gathered on campus last 
September 15 to begin a week of ori¬ 
entation. 

The list of events ran to seven 
typed pages. Some of the items would 
startle even an alumnus from the early 
or middle 'sixties: a drug workshop at 
Barnard, a draft counseling session in 


Ferris Booth Hall, a huge “Be-in" on 
South Field. But Professor Dwight 
Miner delivered his timeless lecture 
on the history of Columbia College, 
and placement exams, the bane of 
generations of incoming freshmen, 
were administered daily. 

At the Residence Halls Office in 
Livingston Lobby, the wide-eyed looks 
gave way to grimaces, first of bore¬ 
dom and then of annoyance, as stu¬ 
dents endured seemingly endless 
waits to arrange room and fee ad¬ 
justments. And on the evening of 


the 15th, more than 50 black fresh¬ 
men crowded into Livingston's main 
lounge, where a hand-lettered sign 
proclaimed, “Lounge Reserved for 
Black Students Only." “Don't cut your 
hair," one speaker admonished them. 
"Be yourself. Don't worry about being 
collegiate." (College officials, in¬ 
formed afterward, disclaimed re¬ 
sponsibility for the poster. “It's not 
only against our policies; it's illegal," 
exclaimed one.) 

Since the admissions office does 
not maintain any quota system, geo- 


THEY ALSO SERVE who only 
watch and wait. 



° 

< 

1 

I 


2 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 
































DAILY SPECTATOR 





NO REDCAPS: Dad gives the kids 
a helping hand. 



COMPARING NOTES: Freshmen leaf through 
1974 directory. 


1 

I 

I 


graphical or otherwise, it is natural 
that the 1970 class profile should vary 
somewhat from that of its immediate 
predecessor. Representation from the 
New England states has dipped from 
114 in 1969 to 68 this year. There 
has also been a drop in the number 
of midwesterners — 35 instead of 61 
— but the Middle Atlantic contingent 
is up from 406 to 475. Admissions 
personnel can offer no reason for the 
shifts, although some speculate that 
the rising costs of higher education 
have prompted youngsters to seek 


out colleges closer to home. Perhaps 
the most significant fluctuation is in 
the percentage of minority students — 
Black, Latin, and Asian — which has 
jumped from about 13 per cent to 
20 per cent. 

The portfolios of the newcomers 
attest to a wide range of achieve¬ 
ments. One enterprising 17-year-old, 
who has dabbled in stocks since he 
was ten, is currently an over-the- 
counter trader for a listed Wall Street 
brokerage firm, as well as the senior 
partner of his own investment com¬ 


pany (with a sales volume of over a 
million dollars in 1968, and an esti¬ 
mated volume of twice that in 1969). 
His ambition is to be a millionaire 
by his junior year. Another lad co¬ 
hosts a radio discussion program on 
WRVR, the FM radio station of River¬ 
side Church; a third has published 
music reviews regularly in a New 
York rock magazine. And there is the 
usual assortment of exotic hobbies, 
including, of all things, a spider col¬ 
lection. 


THEY KEEP THEIR SILENT WATCH AND WARD: 
For some, Orientation Week is one long wait. 



1 

% 

I 




AROUND THE QUADS 


3 




























THE MIDDLE 
WAY 

Perspectives sometimes change 
with the seasons. Last May, at the 
height of the disturbances generated 
by the Cambodian invasion and the 
Kent State killings, University Senate 
voted overwhelmingly for a ten-day 
pre-election recess in late October 
and early November. The purpose of 
the recess, which has been instituted 
at other schools, was to permit stu¬ 
dents to work for political candi¬ 
dates. Although the proposal origi¬ 
nated with two students, several fac¬ 
ulty moderates, including Dean of 
the College Carl Hovde, joined in 
co-sponsoring it. 

The trustees were expected to 
act on the measure in June. When 
June went by without any word from 
Low Library, undergraduates and 
some of their teachers were heard 
to mutter that the trustees would 
probably reject the motion, thereby 
rebuffing the Senate for the first time. 
Such action, it was felt by many, 
would demonstrate conclusively that 
the trustees would never permit the 
Senate to become an instrument for 
truly meaningful reform. 

In fact, the trustees did ask the 
Senate to reconsider the resolution at 
their meeting on July 7, warning in a 
seven-page letter that "the increased 
political activities on the campus 
which would almost inevitably fol¬ 
low from the establishment of an 
election recess" could jeopardize the 
University's tax-exempt status. How¬ 
ever, the Executive Committee of the 
Senate turned down the request a 
month later, although it acknowl¬ 
edged in its own letter that individual 
committee members shared many of 
the apprehensions voiced by the 
trustees. On Monday, September 14, 
the trustees gave in, and accepted, 
reluctantly, the Senate's plan. 

But the debate, already four 
months old, still wasn't over. All that 
the trustees had done was to author¬ 
ize the Senate to adopt .a new aca¬ 
demic calendar in which a recess 
would be included. Meanwhile, pas¬ 
sions, like the weather, had cooled 
considerably since the preceding 
spring. Many had begun to question 


whether the majority of students 
would use the ten-day break to pro¬ 
mote political causes. Some feared 
that student political activity would 
actually be counterproductive, given 
the growing nationwide backlash 
against the young. Newly-installed 
President William McGill came down 
hard against the proposal, warning 
that it was "dangerous to our role 
as a scholarly community," and Dean 
Hovde, one of the original co-spon¬ 
sors, acknowledged that he was think¬ 
ing of calling for a University-wide 
referendum, though he later sup¬ 
ported the recess on the Senate floor. 
An unofficial poll of more than 1100 
Columbia College students showed 
that over a third still favored the ten- 
day plan, fewer than a third thought 
five days were adequate, and the re¬ 
maining third wanted no recess at all. 

On Friday, October 2, Senate met 
to consider the matter for the last 
time. The legislative body, consisting 
of students, faculty, administrators 
and alumni, gave the University com¬ 
munity a working lesson in the pol¬ 
itics of compromise. Instead of re¬ 
enacting the ten-day recess, or abol¬ 
ishing it altogether, Senate voted for 
a four-day recess, to run from Oc¬ 
tober 30 until November 2. The lost 
time will be made up during the 
Christmas vacation period, which will 
be shorter this year than in the past. 

In other political news, President 
McGill issued a set of guidelines gov¬ 
erning the use of campus facilities for 
political purposes. The guidelines, 
which were approved by the trustees, 
follow recommendations put forward 
during the summer by the American 
Council on Education. They require 
all partisan groups to pay for the use 
of University space, telephones, and 
materials according to a specified fee 
schedule. Under this schedule, rooms 
are rented for 20 cents per seat per 
day, which means that McMillan 
Theater would cost $242.40, and 
Harkness, $58.80. The guidelines re¬ 
flect widespread fears, shared by the 
President, that the University would 
risk losing its tax exemption if it 
tolerated the sort of political activity 
which allegedly went on in some of 
the buildings last May. Campus or¬ 
ganizations have announced plans to 
challenge the new regulations in 
court. 


MASTER PLAN 

The legacy of Spring 1968 in¬ 
cludes both the eyesore of a useless 
excavation in Morningside Park and 
the fresh vision of I.M. Pei & Partners' 
master plan for the University. The 
events of that fateful May surprised 
both friend and foe of Columbia, but 
in their aftermath one fact became 
glaringly clear to all: the University 
could not continue to expand off- 
campus without incurring the wrath 
of many in the Morningside com¬ 
munity. There could be no peace on 
the Heights unless Columbia radically 
revised both its image and future 
building plans. 

The University's apparent insen¬ 
sitivity to an increasingly vocal and 
distrustful, if decimated, community 
was not the only problem. Columbia 
had had no plan for overall physical 
development since the one form¬ 
ulated in 1898 by the original master 
architect, Charles Follen McKim. Mc- 
Kim had sketched in future buildings, 
but as time went on his essentially 
sound scheme was ignored. The co¬ 
hesiveness of the campus had fallen 
victim to ad hoc planning and eco¬ 
nomic compromise. 

In the fall of 1968 the University 
created the position of Assistant Vice 
President for Physical Planning and 
appointed John Telfer, an experienced 
engineer-architect and administrator, 
to fill it. Telfer worked rapidly at com¬ 
pleting the negotiations the admin¬ 
istration and trustees had begun the 
previous February with renowned 
architect I.M. Pei. In November 1968 
Columbia signed a contract with Pei. 
The agreement gave the chief archi¬ 
tect and the other members of his 
firm an extremely broad mandate. 
They were to talk to administrators, 
faculty, students and community 
groups and prepare a master plan 
which would serve the best interests 
of everyone. The plan would then 
be thrown open to University-wide 
discussion. If any of its features were 
adopted, Pei would remain available 
as chief consultant to the University 
and to the individual architects chosen 
to design specific buildings. 

Last spring the Pei firm submitted 
its report, which immediately pro¬ 
duced controversy, both because of 
its author's concern for the needs of 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








the community, and because of the 
designs themselves. Pei had taken his 
research seriously. If there is any de¬ 
partmental, campus, or neighbor¬ 
hood constituency with which his 
firm did not speak, its members must 
have been on an eighteen-month 
vacation in Siberia. In considering 
both the University and the com¬ 
munity his "clients," Pei was not only 
following then-President Andrew 
Cordier's directive, but also harking 
back to the advice President Seth 
Low gave when he dedicated the 
campus in 1896. 


A university that is set 
upon a hill cannot be hid. 
I count it a matter of no little 
moment that here, in its new 
home, Columbia cannot es¬ 
cape the observation of the 
city, nor can the city escape 
from it. In the desire to be of 
service to the city, the uni¬ 
versity must ever find a po¬ 
tent inspiration. The univer¬ 
sity cannot be indifferent to 
what is going on in the great 
city of which it is a part. . . . 


Pei quoted this advice in his in¬ 
troduction and followed it in his plan. 
With one exception, he urged that all 
future housing be shared by com¬ 
munity and University people. He also 
outlined how such new residential 
units could be financed by drawing 
upon a variety of government sub¬ 
sidies available to each group. Such 
housing would be built on Columbia- 
owned properties along the curvature 
of Morningside Drive between Am¬ 
sterdam Avenue and 121st Street, and 
would include a small park and child 
care center on the ground level of a 
320-apartment tower. The Trustees 
have not yet approved this plan, al¬ 
though another joint town-and-gown 
residential project is expected to be 
endorsed soon. 

Interestingly, a survey of student 
housing preferences undertaken by 
the University's Bureau of Applied 
Social Research showed that only 
Columbia College and Engineering 
students strongly objected to having 
children or elderly people as neigh¬ 
bors. To please them, Pei suggested 
that Ruggles, a decrepit residence hall 
on 114th Street, be renovated into 
four- and six-man suites (allowing 
each student a separate bedroom and 


W. 116 th Street 



W. lUth Street 


The McKim Plan 



AROUND THE QUADS 


5 


Amsterdam Avenue Amsterdam A venue 













































































































including a lounge and kitchenette) 
and thus transformed into a model 
undergraduate dormitory. Pei also rec¬ 
ommended that part of the ground 
floor of Ruggles and the adjoining 
half of a Columbia-owned apartment 
house across a dark courtyard be con¬ 
verted into a cafe, with the court area 
enclosed to provide an informal 
theater inside. This project will cost 
an estimated $1,450,000, and has 
drawn scant comment within the Uni¬ 
versity. 

What has been vociferously dis¬ 
cussed is the fact that, with these 
two exceptions, Pei ignored all Co¬ 
lumbia properties beyond the cam¬ 
pus. Critics, including a few adminis¬ 
trators and some alumni, believe that 
this hands-off attitude concedes far 
too much to the community. The 
criticism may be unfair. The principal 
reason why Pei wants to confine new 
academic structures to the campus is 
because the University does not own a 
consolidated lot of property large 
enough for the institutional buildings 
which he has in mind. (The 121st Street, 
site is a possible exception, but it has 
tenant relocation problems, which ex¬ 
plain in part why Pei hopes to de¬ 
velop it as an ideal university-com¬ 
munity living facility.) Pei's under¬ 
lying assumption, which many campus 
officials share, is that any further land¬ 
grabbing by Columbia would be ruin¬ 
ous to its already strained relations 
with its neighbors. Nevertheless, his 
plan does not call for the sale of 
present off-campus holdings. Rather, 
he hopes to use them for future Uni¬ 
versity-community residential proj¬ 
ects. Pei reckons Columbia owns 
enough land to build over one thou¬ 
sand housing units. 

By eliminating off-campus sites 
for new non-residential buildings, the 
master planners left themselves only 
two directions in which to go: up 
and down. 

Going up, Pei envisions two 23- 
story office towers positioned on the 
east and west flanks of South Field, 
a new Life Sciences Building on 
Broadway between Chandler and 
Pupin, and a tomb-shaped Chemistry 
building elevated on pillars above the 
Uris library. 

Going down, he places under 
South Field a new gym and a two- 
level arcade for student lounges, 


shops, cafes and additional facilities 
for Butler Library. The master archi¬ 
tect also endorsed a plan for sub¬ 
terranean expansion of the School of 
Architecture. 

The Towers 

The towers would face, respec¬ 
tively, Furnald and Hartley, on sites 
which McKim had set aside for future 
buildings. They would reduce the 
width of South Field to 360 feet — 
the exact width planned by McKim in 
1898. At ground level each tower 
would have a two-story high opening 
to provide spatial links across South 
Field. The towers would be used for 
academic and administrative offices, 
enabling the generously proportioned 
rooms of Hamilton, Dodge, and other 
buildings to revert to classrooms. 
Freed space in Low Library might be¬ 
come museum, display, and con¬ 
ference facilities for the whole Univer¬ 
sity. The new buildings would contain 
underground pedestrian passageways 
to the proposed arcades and to the 
subway. 

Proponents of the plan maintain 
that the twin buildings will improve 
the aesthetics of the South campus, 
provide badly needed office space, 
and ensure that the College remains 
the heart of the University. 

Those who argue against the pro¬ 
posal charge that the towers would 
wreck the glorious vista of South 
Field, cause congestion in the area, 
and create more office space than is 
needed. Some administrators have 
privately expressed fears of being too 
near-at-hand targets in the middle of 
the College campus. 

The controversy has underscored 
the difficulty of Pei's assignment to 
construct a master physical plan 
when the University has no master 
academic plan. Pei was forced to ac¬ 
cept at face value estimates by the 
various units and departments of 
space required to serve present needs 
and allow for future growth. President 
McGill has now made preparation of 
a master academic plan his first prior¬ 
ity. Assistant Vice President Telfer, 
who will be mainly responsible fbr co¬ 
ordinating the physical and academic 
plans of the University, acknowledges 
that "Dr. McGill and I have to dope 
out academic matters. We have to 
figure out where we're going, which 
units we're going to strengthen and 


what units to wipe out." This is no 
easy task. Until administrative and 
academic priorities are resolved, the 
tower proposal is not likely to receive 
serious consideration. At this point, 
both the will and the cash to proceed 
with it are almost totally lacking. 

Life Sciences and Chemistry Buildings 

Warner Burns Toan Lunde, Archi¬ 
tects, have already completed pre¬ 
liminary plans for a Life Sciences 
building at a cost which may exceed 
30 million dollars. If construction is 
begun on Life Sciences, it is likely 
that as a temporary economy measure 
only the bottom half of the building 
and the shell for the upper stories 
will be completed initially. The 
Chemistry building, predicts Telfer, 
is at least 20 years in the future. 

South Field Gym and Arcades 

Eggers Partnership, the architects 
who planned the Morningside Park 
gym, have designed an underground 
facility somewhat smaller than the 
one sketched by Pei. Their most re¬ 
cent blueprint calls for a basketball 
arena seating 4000, with an adjacent 
auxiliary court which can be used 
for additional seating. Wrestling 
rooms, fencing rooms, running tracks 
(nine laps to the mile) and a swim¬ 
ming pool seating 800 are also in¬ 
cluded. However, the Eggers scheme 
leaves only 13,500 square feet avail¬ 
able for purposes not related to the 
gym. 

Assistant Vice President Telfer 
and President McGill both feel that 
extra space for student use is critical. 
Comparative studies by Columbia's 
Office of Space Utilization show that 
Columbia has 196 square feet of non- 
residential floor space per full-time 
student, comparing unfavorably with 
Harvard or Chicago (268 square feet), 
Yale (436 square feet) or Princeton 
(500 square feet). Additional under¬ 
ground space adjacent to or above 
the gym, as suggested by Pei, could 
provide more lounges, strolling areas, 
and cafes for students. Pei will meet 
with Jackson Smith of Eggers to dis¬ 
cuss the possibility of including in¬ 
creased facilities for recreation in the 
gymnasium plan. But College alumni 
who have taken a strong interest in 
the gym from the beginning are 
understandably itchy to see construc¬ 
tion under way. A few have threat- 


6 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







ened to stop contributing money if 
bulldozers do not appear soon, and 
any alteration of plans causes delays. 

Some College alumni are also 
touchy about the use of the proposed 
gym by students from other divisions 
of the University or by neighborhood 
youth. The University, nevertheless, 
must favor a facility built with the 
future in mind. Engineering now has 
women undergraduates and college¬ 
wide co-education in some form is 
surely on the horizon. The final gym 
design will probably allow for in¬ 
stant conversion of locker room and 
other facilities for use by women 
members of the University, and the 
completed building will perhaps be 
open to community residents as well. 
The new gym may well cost 5 or 6 mil¬ 
lion dollars more than the 8 V 2 million 
already raised in cash and pledges. 

School of Architecture 

The Pei plan has been refined in 
detailed designs prepared by archi¬ 
tect Alexander Kouzmanoff, who, after 
some squabbling, was unanimously 
selected from the ranks of the archi¬ 
tecture school faculty to head its 
expansion program. Work will prob¬ 
ably be delayed pending a court 
ruling concerning the money donated 
to the School of Architecture by 
Samuel Putnam Avery II in 1913. The 
sum has shrunk during the present 
stock recession and more funds will 
be needed. Nevertheless, Architecture 
appears to be the most affluent of all 
the University divisions which are 
planning construction. 

* * * 

The future — in terms of the ad¬ 
ministration's willingness to think 
realistically about University plan¬ 
ning — looks good. The future — in 
terms of Columbia's present financial 
state — looks grim. President McGill 
has met with I. M. Pei and given him 
his vote of confidence. There is 
every indication that Pei will be re¬ 
tained as master planner to super¬ 
vise and help implement his pro¬ 
posals. Pei's guidelines are long-term, 
and new buildings, as well as renova¬ 
tions of the existing plant, can be 
spaced out over a reasonably lengthy 
period of time. If the necessary funds 
can be found, it may yet be possible 
to meet present and future needs 
while preserving architectural in¬ 
tegrity and community good will. 


DAWN'S EARLY 
LIGHT 

"Dawn," proclaims the gaily- 
colored, psychedelic poster. "A 
Place to Go, A Place to Talk, A Place 
to Be." 

The "place" is not some East 
Village haunt, but John Jay's own 
Half-Crown Room, converted into a 
coffee house every night between the 
hours of ten p.m. and seven a.m. The 
non-profit enterprise, which first 
opened last May, was the brainchild 
of four College students — Duncan 
Darrow 71, John Losk 70, Richard 
Marcellino 71 and Jay Waller 71— 
and is managed and staffed by under¬ 
graduate volunteers from Columbia 
and Barnard. Administrators, con¬ 
vinced that the project was worth¬ 
while, provided the group with funds 
for equipment. 

"We have a lot of night people 
on this campus," explains one official. 
"The idea was to create some facility 
for them." Darrow elaborates: "Pri¬ 
marily what it is is that people are 
just damned lonely — and loneliness 
leads to insecurity, not being able to 
talk, and taking drugs." Dawn, as 
the coffee house is called, aims to 
combat loneliness with generous 


doses of coffee, music, and com¬ 
panionship. 

The visitor enters a small, well-lit 
room with about a dozen round 
tables. ("Some people suggested that 
a coffee shop ought to be dark, but 
we thought that was ridiculous," 
snorts Darrow.) Rock or country 
western music plays over the stereo, 
while two coffee pots percolate in 
the corner. There is no charge for the 
coffee, the only refreshment available 
on the premises, but a sign near the 
dispenser invites guests to make a 
voluntary contribution of a dime. At 
a few tables, a card game or a chess 
match may be in progress, while at 
others, young men and women talk 
quietly. During peak hours, between 
ten and two, as many as a hundred 
people may filter in and out of the 
room for study breaks or before re¬ 
tiring. 

The visitor does not remain alone 
for very long. Eventually, a student- 
one of the volunteer staffers—will de¬ 
tach himself (or herself) from a group 
nearby and sit down next to the new¬ 
comer. "But we don't force ourselves 
on people," emphasizes one of them. 
"If somebody wants to be by himself, 
we can tell quickly enough." The 
volunteers do not wear, any distinc¬ 
tive garb or insignia, because, it is 


ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT: Piles of 
coffee cups suggest it's been a long study 
session at Dawn. 



AROUND THE QUADS 


7 









IN FULL SWING: Dawn is 
"A Place to Go, a Place to Talk, 
a Place to Be." 

felt, this would make the encounter 
seem forced. 

Staff members are wary of pub¬ 
licity, and with reason. “We've al¬ 
ready been depicted in the press as 
some sort of drug clinic," Darrow 
complains, “and that just isn't true." 
What is true, however, is that one 
purpose of Dawn is to provide as¬ 
sistance to students with problems, 
drug-related or otherwise. In fact, 
Dawn traces its ancestry to encounter 
sessions at Phoenix House, a rehabili¬ 
tation center for addicts, to which 
students were invited. “Those sessions 
convinced us," says Darrow, “of the 
therapeutic value of talking about 
whatever is on your mind." Staff 
members meet regularly with Director 
of Counseling Services Dr. Anthony 
Philip, and there is a direct telephone 
connection to the emergency room 
of St. Luke's Hospital. “We don't get 
hard core addicts," Darrow explains, 
“but we do see dabblers in drugs 
who are having physical or psycho¬ 


logical reactions to a bad trip, and 
while we obviously don't try to treat 
them ourselves, we have to know 
how to recognize serious problems 
and deal with them until help ar¬ 
rives." Such cases, of which there 
have been several since the coffee 
house opened, usually appear in the 
waning hours of the morning. 

Troubled youngsters seek out Dawn 

because they know that it is one 
place on campus where they can 
count upon finding sympathetic peers, 
and because the more structured sur¬ 
roundings of the emergency room 
arouse their suspicion and mistrust. 

For most students, however, 

Dawn is simply a place to play 
bridge, give an improvised poetry 
reading, play the guitar, or just re¬ 
lax and listen to the music. Its 

sponsors, meanwhile, continue to 
plan ways to make the surroundings 
more interesting. One idea is to 
change the telephone extension to 
3296. That spells D-A-W-N. 


HANGING ON 

Fraternities, like all structured 
activities, are having their problems 
these days. But several Columbia 
chapters have demonstrated remark¬ 
able flexibility in keeping pace with 
the times, and a hardy handful have 
managed to retain their traditional 
image without suffering any notice¬ 
able diminution in membership. 

Of the former, Alpha Delta Phi, 
once ranked among the more formal 
and conservative of houses, has taken 
particular pains to reach out to a 
more varied constituency than in the 
past. The meal plan has been thrown 
open to outsiders, candidates can be¬ 
gin their pledging period at any time 
during the semester, and the rigid 
etiquette which used to prevail at 
the dinner table and official functions 
has all but vanished. The price which 
the brothers have paid, however, has 
been a drastic falling off in alumni 
support. One officer questioned 
whether the chapter had the money 
to re-open this fall. 

Innovations elsewhere include 
the establishment of weekly sensitiv¬ 
ity group sessions at the Tau Epsilon 
Phi House, under the leadership of 
Adviser to Fraternities Howard Mann. 
And Phi Epsilon Pi, whose national 
has been absorbed by Zeta Beta Tau, 
inducted four Bernard women last 
year, including two seniors. Prior to 
that, women had rented rooms in the 
house, but had not been permitted to 
join the brotherhood. 

Although the Zeta Beta, Tau na¬ 
tional organization has swallowed up 
both Phi Epsilon Pi and Phi Sigma 
Delta (each of which, however, main¬ 
tains a separate chapter here), the 
ZBT local has gone out of existence, 
the victim of disastrous rushing and 
an overly-ambitious meal plan which 
drained the fraternity's resources. The 
fate of ZBT, whose very name in past 
years was almost a synonym for stabil¬ 
ity and affluence, symbolizes the de¬ 
cline of establishment activities at 
Columbia and on other campuses. 
Today the chapter house stands 
empty, its windows broken and cov¬ 
ered with dust. “It is," remarked one 
alumnus, “like seeing grass growing 
in the streets of the Roman Forum." 

A few houses, as if defying the 
winds of change, have continued 


8 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 









ICHABOD: Shuttered windows bear silent testimony to 
the demise of Zeta Beta Tau, once one of the 
wealthiest fraternities at Columbia. 


resolutely to sponsor beer blasts and 
Saturday night parties. An alumnus 
from the 'fifties or even the 'thirties 
would probably not feel out of place 
at Beta Theta Pi, Phi Gamma Delta, 
Sigma Nu or Nu Sigma Chi (formerly 
Sigma Chi). Moreover, the member¬ 
ship rolls of these organizations hover 
fairly consistently in the 40s - a high 
figure these days - although, as one 
brother acknowledged, "we have to 
work three times as hard as we once 
did" to attract and keep new candi¬ 
dates. 

Other fraternities, however, have 
dwindled to a shadow of their former 
size. Typical is the case of Sigma 
Alpha Mu, which from a peak of 
some 70 members a decade earlier 
has shrunk to 17. Sammy, like other 
houses, has taken to renting its rooms 
to outsiders, and has abandoned its 
meal plan as too costly. In fact, of 
the 16 remaining chapters, fewer 
than a third still serve meals on the 
premises. Although there are no pre¬ 
cise figures, informed sources guess 
that only about 15 to 20 per cent of 
Columbia undergraduates join fra¬ 
ternities, compared to 30 or 35 per 
cent in the not-too-distant past. 

The prevailing anti-establishment 
mood is cited as just one of several 
reasons why at least four locals are 
in deep trouble. Another is that the 
conversion of double rooms into 
singles, the institution of floor 
lounges, and the abolition of parietals 
have made the dormitories more at¬ 
tractive places in which to live, 
thereby depriving the fraternities of 
one of their principal selling points. 

"Fraternities used to be a great 
place to meet girls," points out one of¬ 
ficer of Pamphratria, the interfraternity 
council, referring to the "open 
house" parties which the chapters 
used to sponsor on Friday evenings. 
But today, he explained, many young 
women are afraid to travel in New 
York City, even in large groups. "If 
we want to invite unescorted girls 
to a social," he said, "we have to 
make arrangements in advance, meet 
them somewhere, and even pay their 
expenses." Another fraternity man 
complained of the large expenditures 
required to maintain the chapter 
buildings, a number of which are 
quite old. At the same time, he added, 
it is necessary to keep the rents low 


in order to compete with the dorms. 
Moreover, many alumni, worried lest 
the fraternities be swept away alto¬ 
gether in the wake of some future 
University expansion program, have 
refused to help defray the costs of 
upkeep. In an effort to reassure them, 
Dean of the College Carl F. Hovde 
has issued a statement announcing 
that there are no plans afoot to dis¬ 
lodge the houses from their present 
locations. 

Other signs of the times include 
the disappearance of the annual 
songfest and the spring carnival. A 
carnival was scheduled in 1968 and 
1969, but each was cancelled at the 
request of the Dean's Office for fear 
of disruption. "We still have about 
$1000 worth of stuffed animals stored 
away somewhere," grimaced one fra¬ 
ternity man. Although several of the 
older chapters have fallen by the 
wayside, two new ones, both pre¬ 
dominantly black, have sprung up in 
their place: Omega Psi Phi and Alpha 


Phi Alpha. The two rarely participate 
in Pamphratria activities. "We recog¬ 
nize that we draw on different seg¬ 
ments of the community, and as a 
result there's very little contact," ex¬ 
plains Pamphratria president James 
McHaney '71, who acknowledges that 
he doesn't even know where their 
headquarters are located. In fact, 
he adds, one problem which plagues 
Pamphratria is that most of the houses 
differ so markedly from one another 
that they have trouble finding any 
common ground. 

To adviser Mann, this diversity 
is all to the good. "One of the ad¬ 
vantages of modern Columbia fra¬ 
ternities," he declares, "is that they 
offer aJternative life styles, rather 
than only one, and a secure base 
from which to experiment with dif¬ 
ferent ways of living." And to the 
articulate, low-keyed McHaney, they 
provide both a home and a "stable 
element" in the lives of today's be¬ 
wildered youngsters. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


9 










W«i» i*< 



havr fvlt. that ti 
ton hits no 
*y, we arc* 
profess t 
than 

in cases 
that the 
gically so 

i drugs wl 
stances, bat 


matter, fttv) ***** 
we have no x 
be eon 
why 
o 



PUT-DOWN ONE: Columbian photo 
of hash on Dean's drug 
statement. 


PUT-DOWN TWO: Columbian rated 
neighborhood restaurants by cockroaches 
instead of stars. 



PUT-DOWN THREE: In iheir section on 
environmental pollution, Columbian editors dug 
up plenty of dirt. 


NEW 

DIRECTIONS 

When, years from now, members 
of the Class of 70 turn to their 
Columbians, the memories which the 
yearbook will evoke will differ con¬ 
siderably from those brought to mind 
by any Columbian of the past. 

The editors of the 1970 edition 
were faced with a difficult task. In 
no four-year span in the history of the 
University had changes occurred so 
rapidly. Within three years, Columbia 
had had three presidents, created a 
University Senate, and witnessed many 
large and sometimes violent demon¬ 
strations. These, coupled with signifi¬ 
cant alterations in the life styles of 
undergraduates, made a standard pre¬ 
sentation impossible. 

So, in place of the usual pictures 
of fraternities and campus scenes and 
articles about football and social 
events, the 1970 Columbian delves 
into sex, drugs, political protests, race 
relations and many other facets of 
contemporary life at the College. 

"Many Columbia students are too 
sophisticated and cynical for a straight 
yearbook to go over well," com¬ 
mented David Bogorad 70, the editor. 
"What we tried to do was present a 
balanced view and show what Co¬ 
lumbia meant to different people." To 
this end, the book is divided into four 
parts: "The Academic Experience," 
"The Political Theater," "The Social 
Gesalt" and "The Alienating Environ¬ 
ment." There are 29 articles by 26 dif¬ 
ferent people, including some search¬ 
ing interviews with faculty members 
and administrators. 

The interviews, which come at the 
beginning of the book, set the tone for 
what follows. Gone are the trite eulo¬ 
gies of favorite professors. Instead, 
chairman Robert Bush of the psy¬ 
chology department is quoted as say¬ 
ing that "All drugs should be available 
in a democracy, providing full, ac¬ 
curate information is available about 
their effects." Professor of Russian 
Robert Belknap warns, however, that 
"drugs, for people who get heavily in¬ 
volved, cut down on drive." Black his¬ 
tory professor Charles Hamilton gives 
a skeptical appraisal of efforts by Ivy 
League schools to recruit minorities, 
and Sociology professor Emmanuel 


10 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







Wallerstein speaks even more bluntly. 
"Columbia's name is mud in the local 
community," he announces. "It has 
ignored New York City for twenty 
years and now it's got a residue of 
antagonisms and angers." 

The section entitled "The Political 
Theater" contains a mocking, anti- 
S.D.S. account of politics and protest 
at the University during the 1968-69 
academic year, a description of a draft 
physical, a critique of University 
Senate by a radical student senator, 
and an article about the problems of 
Earl Hall, a focal point for radical 
activity on campus. Included is an 
essay by outgoing President Andrew 
Cordier, who singles out community 
relations and finances as the Univer¬ 
sity's two most serious problems, and 
calls for reduced expenditures, im¬ 
proved investment practices, and new 
fund-raising mechanisms. In an article 
entitled "Making It," a black student 
tells what it is like to attend a pre¬ 
dominantly white Ivy League institu¬ 
tion. "The more I realize how much 
whites have," he writes, "the more I 
realize how much blacks have not." 

The most surprising section, and 
the one which caused the greatest 
ripples around Columbia, is "The 
Social Gesalt," which deals with vari¬ 
ous aspects of extracurricular and 
social life. Here, no holds are barred, 
as sex, drugs, coeducational living, the 
football team and fraternities are all 
treated with frankness and candor. 

"Sex and Drugs are What You 
Eat," proclaims the headline of one 
story. "Columbia is impersonal, en¬ 
croaching, alienating," the author ob¬ 
serves. "So drugs of all kinds are big 
at Columbia." In another piece, en¬ 
titled "The Arrangement," a Barnard 
sophomore describes how she lived 
with her boyfriend in Furnald Hall. 
"This is the first time we have treated 
sex forthrightly," Bogorad explained, 
"and there certainly is a lot of forth¬ 
right sex going on." 

An analysis of fraternities ex¬ 
amines their efforts to change with the 
times in order to survive. "We cut the 
dance parties," states one brother. 
"No-one dances anymore. I'd rather 
take a chick up here and smoke." 
Many fraternities, the writer notes, are 
becoming more like "a shabby board¬ 
ing house" than a fraternity. Even the 
articles on Kings Crown Activities 


TWO PART HARMONY: This Barnard girl 
wrote a Columbian article about life 
in Furnald Hall. 

probe more deeply than in the past. 
One seeks to explain why relatively 
few students are attracted to such 
groups today. 

Three sports articles, "The High 
Cost of Losing," "Heartbreak House," 
and "Twelfth Row, Third Seat" ex¬ 
plore the sports scene at Columbia 
from the vantage points of administra¬ 
tor, player, and spectator. "The High 
Cost" deals with the problems in¬ 
volved in recruiting, financing, and 
building winning teams. Harland 
Hoisington, Director of Financial Aid 
for the College, declared that "if Co¬ 
lumbia continues to lose eight or nine 
games a year for the next few years, 
there should be an agonizing reap¬ 
praisal" of the game. Football coach 
Frank Navarro observes that "the Co¬ 
lumbia community has a sense of 
doom about sports." Athletes, he says, 
"tend to drop out of varsity programs 
if the surrounding society doesn't 
honor the athlete or honors some¬ 
thing more. But I'm not sure what it is 
that pulls people away around here." 

The growing concern over eco¬ 
logical issues is reflected in the final 
section, entitled "The Alienating En¬ 
vironment." 

In another break with the past, 
the editors all but renounced still 
photography and experimented in¬ 
stead with new and imaginative visual 
techniques. "I don't think that static 
group pictures are of interest to many 
people," Bogorad explains. "We tried 


to make this as slick and professional 
as possible." One series of photo¬ 
graphs which raised some eyebrows 
depicted a nude couple and accom¬ 
panied the article "Sex and Drugs are 
What You Eat." The choice of content 
was left entirely to the students, 
Bogorad declares, and there was no 
administrative censorship. Director of 
Kings Crown Activities Frank Safran 
concurs, adding that there have been 
"no repercussions whatsoever" from 
the publication of the book. 

Not surprisingly, the 1970 Co¬ 
lumbian has been the most popular in 
recent history, with its entire press run 
of 900 copies already sold. Perhaps 
even more significantly, it has been 
praised by administrators and out¬ 
siders as well as by students. In a letter 
to the editors, thanking them for send¬ 
ing him a copy, President Cordier 
wrote that "the contents reflect the 
achievements of a fine group of young 
men and represent for me a very hope¬ 
ful picture for the future of this nation." 
The New York Times and the Newark 
News have each devoted a feature 
article to the yearbook. The Columbia 
Scholastic Press Association gave Co¬ 
lumbian a medalist award (the Asso¬ 
ciation's highest rating)—but conspic¬ 
uously declined to display the book at 
its recent convention. Sums up Bogo¬ 
rad: "Much of the contents consists of 
'memory material.' People dig it now 
and will dig it even more twenty years 
from now." 


AROUND THE QUADS 


11 











NUMBERS GAME: Draft counselor Sonya Weil '64B 
advises a client at the office of the Draft 
Information Service. 


ADVICE AND 
DISSENT 

The shfadow of Selective Service 
touches the lives of college students 
from the time they turn 18, and 
causes otherwise sensible and strong- 
willed young men to lose their nerve 
and even their wits. Many act im¬ 
pulsively, without adequate informa¬ 
tion, and do themselves irreversible 
injury. Others, paralyzed with fright, 
do nothing at all, in the vain hope 
that the specter of conscription — like 
the spot on the X-ray — will somehow 
vanish by itself. 

Fear is compounded by confu¬ 
sion and uncertainty. Nor, in most 
instances, can the young man go to 
his local board for reliable advice. 
Selective Service regulations, ambigu¬ 
ous and artlessly written, frequently 
puzzle professionals who specialize 
in the field. And draft board per¬ 
sonnel are not professionals, but part- 
time volunteers, or — in the case of 
clerks — laymen who are ill-equipped 
to fathom the complexities of the 
rules which they administer every 
day. Almost every draft counselor 
can tell horror stories of clients who 


were led astray by well-meaning (or, 
sometimes, not so well-meaning) se¬ 
lective service officials. 

"It's incredible how the draft 
can dominate your life," says one 
June graduate, who recalls that, be¬ 
fore he obtained his present defer¬ 
ment, he used to walk the streets 
without bothering to look at traffic 
signals. "I figured that if I got hit by 
a truck, so what?" he explains. Then, 
in the course of seeking his own de¬ 
ferment, he came to realize that the 
draft was vulnerable, and decided 
that he wanted to help others like 
himself. Today he is one of the coun¬ 
selors who work at the Draft Informa¬ 
tion Service in 602 Dodge Hall. 

The service dates back to the 
summer of 1967, when it was founded 
by a divinity student with an office 
in Earl Hall. Today, it claims about 
forty counselors, mostly from the Col¬ 
lege, Teachers College, and General 
Studies, although only about ten of 
them come in more than once a 
week. "There was a big upsurge in 
interest after the Cambodian in¬ 
vasion," one reports. During the last 
summer alone, he and his associates 
trained between 30 and 40 candi¬ 
dates. All, however, have since 
dropped out of the program. 


Training, for a prospective coun¬ 
selor, consists of four three-hour ses¬ 
sions, one of which is devoted en¬ 
tirely to the problems of conscien¬ 
tious objection, followed by an 
"internship" in which he observes an 
experienced counselor, and some 
practice periods when the counselor 
watches him. Role-playing is an im¬ 
portant part of the preparation, as 
the instructor frequently places him¬ 
self in the position of a client seeking 
help. Counselors estimate that only 
about a fifth of the candidates remain 
in the program after their training 
period is over. Of the remainder, 
however, at least some go on to do 
counseling elsewhere. "We trained a 
whole group of people from Platts¬ 
burgh, N. Y.," says Peter Grossman 
'70, who has counseled since the 
beginning of his senior year. Other 
trainees have included practicing 
lawyers who want to handle selective 
service cases in their own offices. 

Quarters are cramped, but ade¬ 
quate. The office functions under the 
auspices of the University Placement 
Service, which provides space, a tele¬ 
phone, and money to buy books and 
hire a secretary. The biggest problem 
is the number of clients, estimated at 
25 to 40 a week, and as many as 60 


12 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








during peak periods, with perhaps 
eight or nine coming in during the 
course of an average day. (The office 
is open from nine to five on week¬ 
days, and in the evening by appoint¬ 
ment.) "It's amazing how many guys 
come in to ask 'just one question,'" 
chuckles one volunteer, "and find 
out that they have all sorts of grounds 
for .deferments which they'd never 
even imagined." 

In spite of the heavy case-load, 
the service has compiled an impres¬ 
sive record of successes. "There are 
so many loopholes that it's easy to 
get out, once you know where to go 
for information," comments one ad¬ 
viser. Usually, he says, the only ones 
who can't be helped are those who 
deliberately challenge the system, or 
wait too long. "A lot of people come 
in here after they've taken some ac¬ 
tion and realize they've blown it," he 
says ruefully. "But otherwise there's 
seldom any problem — as long as 
you're articulate and have money." 
The fact that deferments come more 
easily to the well-educated and well- 
to-do has discouraged many coun¬ 
selors, and has even caused some lo 
leave the program. "You feel dif¬ 
ferently about helping a college kid 
when you realize that his place is 
being filled by an impoverished 
black," one explained. 

Moral dilemmas such as this one 
cause the counselors to differ among 
themselves in their approaches to 
their work. All oppose the draft ("Ob¬ 
viously, we're not doing this because 
we think it's a groovy extracurric"), 
but some view their activities as a 
means of fighting the Selective Serv¬ 
ice system, while others believe that 
their principal purpose is to protect 
individuals from being treated un¬ 
fairly. All, however, are careful not 
to impose their views on their coun- 
selees. "Our job is to elicit their be¬ 
liefs, not to make their decisions for 
them," Grossman emphasizes. "If, 
say, a kid wants to go to Canada 
(which — contrary to popular impres¬ 
sion — is not against the law), all 
that we do is tell him what he's up 
against and point out the problems 
involved in finding work and adjust¬ 
ing socially." Also, Grossman adds, 
the service will counsel anyone, not 
just conscientious objectors. "Many 
of our guys are business school types, 
self-proclaimed hawks who just don't 


want to interrupt their educations or 
careers." He acknowledges, however, 
that C.O.s usually get more attention, 
not only because the counselors are 
sympathetic toward them, but be¬ 
cause their cases take more time to 
prepare. Only a few of the counselors 
are deferred as conscientious ob¬ 
jectors themselves, but several have 
applications pending, and others 
would have been classified as C.O.s 
if they hadn't been eligible for other 
deferments. 

The counselors check with a 
lawyer on unusually complex ques¬ 
tions, but otherwise rely upon their 
own knowledge of the regulations, 
asking one another for assistance 
when in doubt. Selective Service law 
is sufficiently self-contained so that 
laymen can master it without much 
difficulty. "Our toughest clients, 
though, are law students," laughs 
Grossman. "They want to check 
everything themselves." 

In 1967, a Presidential commis¬ 
sion reported, with President Lyndon 
Johnson's approval, that there was 
great need to disseminate more in¬ 
formation about the draft among the 
young. The men and women who 
staff the Draft Information Service 
are carrying out the Presidential 
mandate. 

WHAT PRICE 
POLITICS? 

The Columbia Daily Spectator was 
investigated by the Internal Revenue 
Service over the summer, to deter¬ 
mine whether it had violated the 
terms of its income tax exemption. 

Several educational institutions 
have faced similar investigations in the 
wake of campus political activities last 
May. However, Spectator controller 
Robert Hunt '71 and I.R.S. officials 
agree that the present close scrutiny 
has nothing to do with the spring pro¬ 
tests. "This is a perfectly normal 
audit," insisted Milton A. Waldman, 
of the I.R.S. Manhattan public infor¬ 
mation office. "The real problem is 
that it took us four years to get around 
to it." In fact, Hunt reports, Spectator 
was first notified of the impending in¬ 
vestigation as early as November, 
1969. 

Tax-exempt corporations are not 


permitted to endorse candidates for 
office or take positions on pending 
legislation, and Spectator has ad¬ 
mittedly done both on numerous oc¬ 
casions. In 1966, for example, the 
newspaper announced for Nelson 
Rockefeller in the gubernatorial race, 
and supported the New York City 
civilian police review board. In 1968, 
the campus daily scored the national 
anti-riot act and backed Eldridge Clea¬ 
ver for president. In all, the I.R.S. field 
auditor found that Spectator had 
violated the tax-exemption guidelines 
in eleven separate editorials between 
1966 and 1968 alone. 

What confuses the issue, how¬ 
ever, is that Spectator acknowledged 
that it did not comply with the guide¬ 
lines in a note appended to its original 
exemption application, filed in 1965. 
The note read: "Editorial comment as 
determined by the student editorial 
Managing Board sometimes deals with 
pending or proposed legislation and 
with candidates for political office and 
sometimes takes a stand with respect 
thereto." Waldman termed the initial 
granting of the application "a mis¬ 
take," in view of the statement at¬ 
tached to the form. 

What will happen next is not yet 
clear. According to Hunt, the editors 
can choose among three possible re¬ 
sponses. They can adopt the sugges¬ 
tion of I.R.S., which is that they simply 
refrain from endorsing candidates in 
the future "as if nothing had hap¬ 
pened." They can carry on their 
present policy, in which case it is 
likely that the exemption will be re¬ 
voked shortly. Or, they can surrender 
the exemption voluntarily. Editor-in- 
chief Martin Flumenbaum '71 states 
that the editorial board has not yet de¬ 
cided which of the three courses to 
follow. 

I.R.S. officials have indicated that 
they will not ask for back taxes even 
if the exemption is revoked, and, since 
Spectator's taxable income is small, 
future federal taxes are unlikely to in¬ 
volve a significant sum. Far more seri¬ 
ous is the possibility that the loss of 
the federal tax exemption will cause 
New York State officials to lift the 
state exemption as well. Such a move, 
Hunt warns, would cost the news¬ 
paper several thousand dollars a year, 
primarily in state sales taxes, and could 
deal a decisive blow to Spectator's al¬ 
ready shaky finances. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


13 







OPEN DOOR 
POLICY 

You're a Columbia student, and 
you'd rather not live with your 
parents. But the dorms turn you off, 
you don't care for fraternity life, and 
you don't want the responsibilities of 
having your own apartment. What's 
left? Schuyler Hall. 

Schuyler, which is operated by 
the worldwide Catholic lay associa¬ 
tion Opus Dei, is the only non- 
Columbia residence which is ap¬ 
proved for College freshmen. In ad¬ 
dition, a number of upperclassmen 
live there, as well as graduate stu¬ 
dents and students from other city 


schools. In all, the building — situated 
just across the street from the Morn- 
ingside campus — houses some 75 
men, 80 per cent of whom attend Co¬ 
lumbia. Only about half are Catholic. 

The opulence of the public rooms 
suggests a mansion rather than a 
dormitory. The small first-floor 
lounge, the only area in which wom¬ 
en are permitted, is decorated with 
paintings on loan from a Spanish 
grandee. (Opus Dei originated in 
Spain, and its dormitory in Madrid— 
the first of more than 200 scattered 
around the world — was among the 
early casualties of the Spanish Civil 
War.) The well-appointed libraries, of 
which there are several, include selec¬ 
tions ranging from spy novels to the 
classics. There is also a chapel. 


Upstairs, the residents live in single 
rooms, which cost $155 or $190 a 
month, depending upon size. The 
price of the room includes meals, 
which are served in a spacious dining 
room downstairs. No locks are per¬ 
mitted on the doors, because, ex¬ 
plains Assistant Director Dennis Hel¬ 
ming, "we want to establish a home¬ 
like atmosphere, and people don't 
lock their doors at home." Rules are 
established by a committee consist¬ 
ing of Mr. Helming, Director John 
Solarski, and two students appointed 
by the director. Although women 
guests are not allowed except in the 
first-floor lounge, there is no curfew 
for the men. Residents wear jackets 
and ties to the dinner table, not, says 
Helming, in obedience to any formal 


SYMMETRY: Schuyler Hall 
provides an orderly environment for 
living and learning. 


MAGNUM OPUS: Residents can study in comfortable 
surroundings at Schuyler Hall , run by the 
Catholic lay order Opus Dei. 



14 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 















regulation, but because it is the 
recognized thing to do. The evening 
meal is occasionally preceded by 
cocktails and is followed by coffee 
in the living room. 

Officials of Opus Dei dormitories 
are usually established businessmen 
who donate a few years of their lives 
to the Order. Solarski, for instance, is 
a physicist, while Helming is a public 
relations man who attended Harvard 
College and received both a B.A. and 
and an M.A. in philosophy from the 
University of Navarre. Schuyler Hall 
itself is supported by donations from 
private individuals and foundations. 

The tone of the place is set by 
its brochure, which proclaims that it 
seeks students who wish "to broaden 
their horizons in accordance with an 
integral humanistic ideal involving 
the whole person" and "prepare 
themselves for the task of responsible 
professional and social leadership." 

"Anyone who is willing to study 
only enough to get by, who views 
college as a pretext for every form of 
gratification, the ideological tyrant 
whose anarchical bent has more to do 
with his personal guilt complex than 
the state of society ... all of these 
student types just'wouldn't be com¬ 
fortable at Schuyler," declares the 
house newsletter. "To admit them 
would be like inviting them to go 
the wrong way on a one-way street." 
Or, as Helming puts it, "We're look¬ 
ing for a gentleman-scholar with an 
old-fashioned allegiance to the liberal 
arts ideal: not necessarily an estab- 
lishmentarian, but one who will ef¬ 
fect improvements from within." 

There must be more of these at 
Columbia than many alumni seem to 
realize. The house admissions com¬ 
mittee, which screens candidates 
carefully in two separate interviews, 
is usually faced with three or more 
applications for every vacant place. 
Among the attractions, residents list 
not only such amenities as a 22-foot 
cabin cruiser and country retreats, all 
provided by friends of the Order, 
but the quality of the food, the 
friendly yet serious atmosphere, the 
strong community spirit. "This place 
sure is different," says one, summing 
up the feelings of the others. "It's not 
a frat, it's not a club, it's not a dorm." 
And indeed Schuyler Hall aims to be, 
not any of these things, but a home. 



HOME IS WHERE THE 
HEARTH IS: a lounge 
in Schuyler Hall. 


A TIME TO PLAY: 
students toss a football in front 
of Schuyler. 




GRACIOUS LIVING: Schuyler Hall 
dinners are sometimes preceded by 
a cocktail hour. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


15 


L 















UNION BLUES 

There's going to be a big 
explosion here. All our griev¬ 
ances are going to explode. 

SDS and the student groups 
will be on our side, and 
they'll be riots and the Uni¬ 
versity is going to have to 
listen. 

A Columbia guard 

It sounds like something a student 
radical dreamed one night. The cam¬ 
pus guards will beat their nightsticks 
into plowshares after joining arm and 
arm with fellow Columbia workers 
and students to turn the University 
into a proletarian paradise. But this 
statement was not part of an SDS 
reverie or an administrator's night¬ 
mare. It was uttered by a University 
guard, white and over 30. 

This man's grievances are typical: 
he feels he isn't paid enough to sup¬ 
port his family in New York City, 
which is true; and he feels he is dis¬ 
criminated against because of his skin 
color. If he were black he would prob¬ 
ably feel the same way. 

What makes him atypical, how¬ 
ever, is his belief in the efficacy of a 
student-worker alliance functioning 
to bring about major changes on cam¬ 
pus. Many workers, especially those 
who were involved in the unioniza¬ 
tion struggles of the 'sixties, are grate¬ 
ful for student support when there is 
"trouble," but they nevertheless feel 
that workers are workers and students 
are students and their interests are not 
the same. Moreover, even those 
workers with complaints do not gen¬ 
erally view their employer, Columbia 
University, as Public Enemy Number 
One. 

The object of a gripe is usually 
specific: a less deserving worker is a 
job grade ahead and makes more 
money; a supervisor is "down on 
me;" a union representative is inef¬ 
fectual. Most complainants freely ad¬ 
mit that similar conditions exist else¬ 
where. 

This is not to deny that much of 
their dissatisfaction is well-founded. 
Columbia's wage scales are approxi¬ 
mately the same as those of private 
employers, and most of the 6100 sup¬ 
porting staff members realize that the 
University cannot pay more than the 


»i _ nm 0 



going rate. But the going rate is often 
below the minimum set by the U.S. 
Department of Labor for decent living 
in New York City. (The most recent 
statistics suggest a floor of $6771 be¬ 
fore taxes for a family of four, allow¬ 
ing an often unrealistic $110 per 
month for rent.) It is small wonder, 
therefore, that even unionized work¬ 
ers frequently feel underpaid. Yet, al¬ 
though words such as "injustice" 
spring readily to their lips, they seem 
more interested in their own security 
than in the overthrow of "capitalist 
exploitation." 

The new contract negotiated with 
Transport Workers Union Local 241 
last July shows a weekly salary range 
(based on 40 hours) of from $100.40 
to $236.80. The lowest amount goes to 
maids and attendants, the highest to 
watch engineers. Elevator operators 
make $103 weekly; janitors, $118; 
guards, $126 to $145; groundsmen, 
$118 to $126; and mechanics, $137 to 
$182. 

One Puerto Rican janitor who has 
been on the job less than six months is 
delighted with his salary. His English is 



poor, and it is unlikely he could get a 
better job elsewhere. A colleague of 
his who earns the same wage after 
more than five years at Columbia is 
not so pleased. (Both men send 
money to wives and children who still 
live in Puerto Rico because they 
"couldn't support them good here.") 
The senior man hesitantly suggests, in 
accented but fairly good English, that 
perhaps seniority should be worth 
more. 

The union prefers a salary scale 
which is based on strict job categories 
rather than the length of service, and 
criticism of this policy is usually di¬ 
rected against the union. 

TWU members who are dis¬ 
satisfied for a variety of reasons accuse 
union stewards of being "weak." A 
few consider their union executives 
"in cahoots with Columbia." 

One cloakroom attendant is a 
middle-aged Afro-American woman 
(she considers "black" an insult) who 
has worked for Columbia more than 
fifteen years. She has "no complaint 
with Columbia" but confesses that 
some of her co-workers call her an 


16 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 












"Uncle Tom." The woman, who 
started here as a part-time maid (four 
hours daily) at $27 a week, is grateful 
to the University for finding her a new, 
less strenuous job after a long period 
of hospitalization. Fortunately, this 
lady had carried her own Blue Cross 
policy which covered a large percent¬ 
age of her hospital bill. (There was no 
hospital plan paid by Columbia for 
workers in her category until 1968.) 

She also feels that Columbia has 
made great progress in hiring minority 
group workers since she first came. 
Fifteen years ago, she says, most of the 
maids were Irish. Today they are 
mostly black. 

University Business Manager 
Joseph Nye confirms the cloakroom 
attendant's observations, adding that 
it is his "impression that before World 
War II there was a policy of hiring only 
whites." At present more than 30% of 
campus workers are from minority 
groups. 

The extent of Columbia's progress 
in this area is disputed by a black 
maintenance man who points out that 
minority workers are concentrated in 


the lowest-paying jobs. He alleges that 
there is an unwritten policy of exclud¬ 
ing minority group members from the 
high-paying maintenance categories 
of engineers and top mechanics. 
"Those apprentices somehow never 
make the grade," he reports. 

Female maids sometimes com¬ 
plain of sex discrimination, charging 
that they do the same job as male 
janitors who earn $18 per week more. 
On paper, the janitors' duties are far 
more rigorous — their tasks include, 
for example, the lifting of heavy ma¬ 
terials—but some maids insist that in 
practice the differences are less dis¬ 
tinct. No woman has ever applied to 
be a janitor, as far as administrators 
can recall. "If any did," said one, 
"we'd consider her if we thought she 
was strong enough." 

Generally speaking, however, the 
approximately 650 TWU workers on 
campus seem better pleased with their 
working conditions than do the 500- 
odd members of Local 1199 of the 
Drug and Hospital Union. TWU has 
been on campus since 1943, when the 
War Labor Board directed Columbia 


University to recognize it. Maintenance 
and some related service workers 
were the only unionized employees 
until 1968. Columbia's "union-bust¬ 
ing" stance is better remembered by, 
and the scars are more visible among, 
members of 1199. 

The unionization of cafeteria 
workers in 1968 ended a long struggle 
begun in the early 'fifties. At that time, 
the University vehemently opposed a 
union for food service workers on the 
ground that it would jeopardize stu¬ 
dent jobs. In the spring of 1952, cafe¬ 
teria employees struck for three weeks 
with the full support of TWU workers 
who refused to cross the picket lines 
and stayed home. 

TWU took Columbia to court 
over the unionization of the cafeteria 
workers, but lost when the court re¬ 
affirmed the exemption of educational 
institutions from the state law requir¬ 
ing collective bargaining. 

The issue, however, was not dead 
and in the early 'sixties a new rash of 
picketing erupted. In the fall of 1964, 
sympathy for the cafeteria workers 
was so great that President Kirk issued 


AROUND THE QUADS 


17 









"ALL RIGHT, 

who asked for pheasant 

under glass?" 


a lengthy memo to the faculty explain¬ 
ing the University's position against 
unionization and detailing the benefits 
already available to its non-union 
workers. 

In 1966 the state law prohibiting 
organization of hospital workers was 
changed and Harlem Hospital was 
unionized by Local 1199. In 1968 the 
exemption for educational institutions 
was also repealed and 1199 began to 
organize on Morningside Heights. An 
election was held in the summer of 
1968, and the Drug local won the right 
over the TWU to represent cafeteria 
workers. 

The spring of 1969 brought further 
demonstrations and strikes, this time 
from clerical workers who wished to 
organize. Six office units held elec¬ 
tions and five voted for a union: the 
Controller's office, Social Work office, 
Computer Center, Mail Room, and 
Library. The Alumni Records office 
and, later, the Bookstore workers 
voted against unionization. During the 
same period, 1199 lost a bitter battle 
to represent willing students who were 
part-time library workers when the 


American Arbitration Association de¬ 
cided for Columbia. 

One of the leading organizers of 
the 'sixties has been Sidney Von 
Luther, a former student at the School 
of General Studies. According to Von 
Luther, "the University was not cynical 
(in its anti-unionism), just naive. All 
kinds of social currents were going on 
outside, but Columbia continued to 
see its employees as privileged." Von 
Luther, who was just elected state 
senator, more than once pitted his wits 
against those of Joseph Nye, University 
Business Manager. In retrospect, Von 
Luther can say: "Dealing with Joe Nye 
is not the worst thing in the world. 
He's too sharp to put himself in a 
bind." 

Even today, workers often attrib¬ 
ute what one called "out-dated, anti¬ 
union attitudes" to the Columbia 
administration. There are also com¬ 
plaints that union activists are har¬ 
assed by supervisory personnel. Em¬ 
ployees have been heard to insist that 
such harassment is sanctioned, at least 
tacitly, by high-ranking administrators. 

It is probable, however, that these 


officials are too high up on the cor¬ 
porate ladder to be aware of the 
alleged injustices. Moreover, substan¬ 
tiating any charge of "harassment" is 
difficult at best. According to a former 
cafeteria worker and a presently- 
employed library worker, both of 
whom are active in employee affairs, 
being "singled out" by one's super¬ 
visor is a subtle process. A clerical 
worker will learn that he is "timed" 
when he goes to a rest-room, for ex¬ 
ample. A cafeteria worker will be 
scheduled to work week-end shifts 
more often than usual. Such petty 
retribution, when it really exists, may 
be meted out by a supervisor for any 
one of a number of personal reasons. 
And although "life can be made hell 
for a worker," systematic persecution 
is so difficult to prove that it can rarely 
be dealt with through union grievance 
procedures. 

Cafeteria workers in Johnson Hall 
(the only campus dining room run by 
Columbia instead of a contractor) 
complain so regularly of harassment 
that both Nye and Personnel Director 
Robert Adams are aware of the prob- 


18 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






A WOMAN'S PLACE: 

This typist has 
a college degree. 

lems there. However, Nye also points 
out that Johnson Hall has the best food 
on campus. Noting the level of the 
competition, most campus diners 
would grudgingly agree. 

Cafeteria workers have other 
complaints besides harassment. Sala¬ 
ries are deemed low even by workers 
who say the union got them a good 
deal. Dishwashers, for example, earn 
$100 a week; a head cook is paid 
$140. 

One cafeteria worker charges that 
kitchen jobs are segregated by race. 
("The dishwashers are Latin, the cooks 
are black, and up front at the counter 
where they can be seen the workers 
are mixed.") 

There are also allegations of dis¬ 
crimination against minority group 
workers in the libraries and Con¬ 
troller's office. In one incident, the 
Spanish workers who man the bindery 
department in Butler's basement were 
ordered to speak only in English. 1199 
applied pressure, and the department 
head apologized. 

Clerical workers in 1199 are apt 
to voice the same dissatisfactions as 


their non-union counterparts. Secre¬ 
taries, especially college-educated 
ones, are likely to feel that they are 
working at jobs beneath their abilities 
because of their sex. Women with 
B.A.s gnd up typing for administrators, 
they claim, while men become junior 
administrators. 

Administrative Assistants, all non¬ 
union, found new cause for grief 
when it was announced last summer 
that they would no longer be eligible 
for Secretarial Appointments. This 
downgrading move meant that for 
those who did not already hold such 
appointments, there would be no 
vested retirement plan. Administrative 
Assistants tend to be older "company" 
women who value this type of secu¬ 
rity. 

Some of Morningside's 80 admin¬ 
istrative assistants have an additional 
reason for unhappiness. According to 
present salary scales, $10,000 is the 
top annual salary for assistants except 
for those connected with the largest 
departments. For an employee's child 
to be eligible to have his college tui¬ 
tion at another school half-paid by 


Columbia, his parent must earn a 
salary at least equal to the minimum 
paid to an assistant professor, $10,500. 
"To him who has shall be given" is not 
an uncommon economic practice, but 
surely it has a special irony when the 
commodity is education and the 
donor a university. 

Columbia as an employer has a 
very different image than Columbia as 
an educator. The University is prob¬ 
ably no less sensitive than other cor¬ 
porations in its hiring and personnel 
policies. In fact, student and com¬ 
munity pressure may serve to make 
Columbia morp responsive than most 
to the views of its workers. Still, a dis¬ 
parity in attitudes persists. Like other 
schools, Columbia's commitment to 
excellence in education is not always 
matched by a commitment to excel¬ 
lence in working conditions. "Granted 
it should be," said one administrator, 
"but it can't be, and a choice has to 
be made within the limits of available 
resources. We don't have as much 
money as we'd like for our faculty, 
either." 

It may indeed be unrealistic to 
expect any institution with an $11 mil¬ 
lion deficit to be a model employer. 
To a growing number of students and 
workers, however, it is even more un¬ 
realistic in 1970 to believe that excel¬ 
lence in one area can be maintained 
at the expense of the other. 

Columbia's understandable cost- 
consciousness may well conflict with 
the growing unwillingness of workers 
to remain docile when their vital 
needs are affected. And fewer and 
fewer students are content to view 
employees as dependent economic 
variables. The man behind the broom 
has a face. The woman behind the 
typewriter has a college degree. 

Even in the midst of their concern 
with the maimed in Vietnam, the pol¬ 
luted streams in America, and the 
daily indignities heaped upon their 
Harlem neighbors, more and more stu¬ 
dents are thinking about the needs of 
the non-academic employees in their 
own campus community. Does that 
man with the broom make enough to 
support his family? Couldn't the 
woman behind the typewriter find a 
more suitable job? 

That impending explosion which 
the guard predicted may be unlikely, 
but it is not impossible. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


19 








UNCLE SAM 
STEPS IN 

The largest minority group at Co¬ 
lumbia University, women, has sum¬ 
moned the long arm of the govern¬ 
ment to campus to aid its cause. The 
Women's Equity Action League 
(WEAL), acting on information pro¬ 
vided by Columbia Women's Libera¬ 
tion, has filed a complaint with the 
Office of Federal Contract Compli¬ 
ance, accusing the University of sex 
discrimination. 

Columbia holds contracts for 
federal funds worth several million 
dollars. These are contracts for specific 
research or work, not federal grants 
or loans for scholarships. Under 
amended Executive Order 11246 no 
federal contracts may be awarded to 
employers which discriminate because 
of race, national origin, religion or sex. 
A statistical imbalance among em¬ 
ployees (disproportionate to society at 
large) in any one of these categories 
has been considered evidence enough 
to warrant official investigation. 

In its complaint, WEAL was able 
to cite such a statistical imbalance 
among the faculty at Columbia, where 
only 5.2% (falling to 2.8% if Barnard 
is excluded) of full professors are 
female. The complaint also charged 
that examination of igraduate school 
admission policies, fellowship pro¬ 
cedures, and personnel practices 
would reveal other areas of discimina- 
tion against women. 

Investigators from the Depart¬ 
ment of Health, Education and Wel¬ 
fare's Office for Civil Rights must now 
visit the Columbia campuses to ascer¬ 
tain if such allegations can be sup¬ 
ported. All University files dealing 
with hiring, promotion, admissions 
and scholarships will be open to them. 
If the investigators' Letter of Finding 
reports evidence of discrimination (as 
WEAL is sure it will), the University 
— to keep its federal contracts — will 
be obliged to submit a "plan of affir¬ 
mative action to remedy effects of past 
discrimination." In previous cases in¬ 
volving racial discrimination this has 
meant that the guilty institution must 
both rectify and recompense. The 
members of Columbia's Women's 
Liberation naturally hope that the Uni¬ 
versity will likewise be compelled to 


initiate a program of rapid hiring and 
promotion of women at all levels of 
the University. As one liberationist put 
it, "The lower levels of administration, 
faculty, and staff must stop being a 
hen party, and the men's club at the 
top must have more than token in¬ 
tegration. The only direction for 
women at Columbia to go is up." 

BEYOND 
HEALTH ED 

The old required course in Health 
Education was the butt of faculty 
jokes and the bane of a freshman's 
existence, with its stodgy materials 
and true-false quizzes, (n recent 
years it has been revitalized, and 
transformed beyond recognition. For 
one thing, it's now called Human De¬ 
velopment, not Health Ed. For an¬ 
other, it's no longer required. Its 
instructors are clinical psychologists, 
rather than academicians, and several 
are practicing psychiatrists as well. 
And it consists not merely of one, but 
of several courses, all of them ex¬ 
citing, imaginative, and — pardon the 
expression — relevant. 

The changes began in 1967, when 
Dr. Anthony Philip, the clinical psy¬ 
chologist who heads the Columbia 
Counseling Service, was asked to take 
charge of the moribund program, 
which had already ceased to be a re¬ 
quirement. One of his first reforms 
was the change of name. " 'Health 
Ed' was an anachronism," he scoffs, 
dating back to the days when the 
course was administered by the phy¬ 
sical education department. Besides, 
students complained that the old 
title drew ridicule when graduate 
school admissions officers reviewed 
their transcripts. Next to go were 
grades, replaced across the board by 
a pass-fail system. "We're trying to 
create a classroom climate in which 
students will talk freely about what's 
on their minds," explains Dr. Philip. 
"They won't do it if they think they're 
being judged." 

Meanwhile, he was bringing in 
new people to staff the program, and 
encouraging experimentation in the 
curriculum. The old course, he be¬ 
lieved, had been "pseudo-scholarly— 
just a waste of time. We didn't even 
try to create a scholarly course. What 



INNOVATOR: Dr. Anthony Philip 
changed the content as well as 
the name of Health Ed. 


we wanted was a clinically-oriented 
survey which would get the kids to 
think psychologically about them¬ 
selves." 

Of the present offerings, the one 
which is probably closest to the old 
Health Ed is now called "Marriage 
and the Family." The reading list 
varies from section to section, with 
Sigmund Freud and E. H. Erikson the 
most popular authors among the in¬ 
structors. There are no exams, but 
the students are expected to turn in 
written assignments. 

In addition, two new courses 
have been initiated since Dr. Philip 
took over. In 1968, Dr. Hugh Butts, 
a black psychiatrist who was teaching 
"Marriage and the Family," became 
persuaded that the problems of the 
black family were distinctive and im¬ 
portant enough to deserve separate 
treatment. Not only are there dif¬ 
ferences in feeding and training pat¬ 
terns, he declares, but, more signifi¬ 
cantly, the psychological manifesta¬ 
tions of oppression have affected the 
family structure. Thus, the so-called 


20 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





PSYCHOHISTORY IN THE MAKING: 
Dr. Robert S. Leibert's Human Development course 
will explore the radical movements of the day. 


"extended family/' augmented by 
relatives and even by non-relatives, is 
more common among blacks than 
among whites. 

The ensuing debate, Dr. Philip 
recalls, "was a microcosm of the 
whole racial question confronting the 
University." Colleagues within the 
program voiced fears that the course 
would become what one called "po¬ 
litical window-dressing." Members of 
the Committee on Instruction ques¬ 
tioned whether Dr. Butts possessed 
the background to deal with the his¬ 
torical materials, and one even 
wondered aloud whether the read¬ 
ings might not prove so inflammatory 
as to trigger violence among the stu¬ 
dents. But the one-term offering was 
finally approved in time for the fall 
semester, 1969. Six whites were 
among the twenty students (the maxi¬ 
mum number permitted by the in¬ 
structor) who enrolled that autumn, 
but in the spring the number fell 
to three. Dr. Butts supplements his 
own lectures by bringing in other 
professionals—psychiatrists and social 


workers — and is toying with the 
thought of inviting a welfare client. 

The other innovation, entitled 
"Psychohistorical Approach to Con¬ 
temporary Youth Movements," is the 
creation of its instructor, psychiatrist 
Robert S. Liebert, who is offering it 
for the first time this fall. Psychohis¬ 
tory is the study of the events and 
forces, internal and extrinsic, which 
motivate people to turn to different 
life styles and methods of political 
behavior: say, to radical political ac¬ 
tivity rather than drugs, or to one type 
of radical activity instead of another. 
Class discussion and student re¬ 
search projects will focus upon the 
youth movements of the day: the 
drug culture, communal living, wom¬ 
en's liberation, gay liberation, black 
power and the New Left. "One 
source of information," Dr. Liebert 
declares, "will be the students them¬ 
selves. The tensions and forces 
which play upon them will provide 
valid data for the study of the various 
issues." Other sources include a 
rigorous reading list, consisting of 


theoretical and research studies of 
various aspects of the youth culture. 

Instructors in the program hope 
in the future to attract more Barnard 
girls. Cross-registration, they com¬ 
plain, is presently blocked by red 
tape. "Ours are two-credit courses," 
Dr. Philip explains, "and Barnard 
doesn't have two-credit courses. The 
women must either receive three 
credits or get none whatsoever." Also, 
no course can be cross-listed unless 
a Barnard department sponsors it, 
and none so far has been willing to 
do so. "But the girls come anyway,' 
Dr. Philip adds. "They audit, or just 
sit in, or come with their boyfriends." 
A few even register and pay fees 
without receiving credit. "Co-ed 
classes are important to what we're 
trying to do," Dr. Philip insists. 
"We're talking about issues of per¬ 
sonal identity, part of which is sexual 
identity, and classroom interaction 
between the sexes has much more 
meaning than lectures on the dif¬ 
ferences between boys and girls." 
It beats true-false quizzes, too. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


21 












LAKESIDE 


CABIN PERUSER: With an iron headboard 
for a pillow, this Camp Columbia freshman 




LEARNING 

I wrote good in high 
school. I thought I was a 
good writer until I came 
here. 

A Camp Columbia student 

Three hours away from the urban 
madness of Morningside Heights lies 
Camp Columbia in quiet, quiet Lake¬ 
side, Connecticut.Twenty-seven mem¬ 
bers of the Class of 1974 spent up to 
five weeks there this past summer 
taking an intensive freshman composi¬ 
tion course. Instruction was provided 
by three College faculty members, and 
Frank Motley '70, a black student now 
at the Columbia Law School, was on 
hand to serve as a counselor. 


Three pre-freshmen came because 
the camp session allowed them to dis¬ 
encumber themselves of the English 
Cl001 -Cl002 requirement before the 
school year began. This four week op¬ 
tion was open to all incoming first- 
year students. The fact that so few 
accepted it probably reflects the over 
$400 expense involved. 

Another 24 journeyed to Lakeside 
because they agreed with Columbia 
that they could profit from a five week 
intensive program aimed at improving 
their reading and writing abilities. 
These men had all been admitted un¬ 
conditionally despite the fact that 
their records showed verbal weak¬ 
nesses. Most of them had SAT verbal 
scores between 420 and 450. Their 
math scores were usually higher, and 


their motivation and non-academic 
assets (such as sports ability or com¬ 
munity involvement) had been praised 
as outstanding by readers of their ad¬ 
missions folders. In most cases their 
lack of strength in English was deemed 
to reflect environmental differences 
and inadequate secondary education, 
rather than low intelligence or moti¬ 
vation. In addition, several foreign 
students, whose first language was 
not English, were believed to need 
further language training before be¬ 
ing loosed to grapple with the rigors 
of CC and Humanities. Of the 40 
men invited to Camp Columbia for 
extra help, 16 chose not to attend. 

For some of those who rejected 
the special help offer, economics may 
have been a factor. Although Colum- 


22 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


SID SATTLER 


















LAYING IT ON THE LINE: 
Melvin Burwell tells the freshmen 
what to expect at Columbia. 


bia granted a stipend of $400 to the 
disadvantaged students to make up 
for lost summer earnings (and waived 
their room and board and tuition 
charges), some pre-college men can 
earn more than $400 during a summer. 

A further inducement to come 
was that students who took the sum¬ 
mer course could earn up to four 
credits. Only three of the under-pre¬ 
pared group earned the four credits, 
most earned two, and a few received 
remedial benefit only. 

Despite the rural greenery, or per¬ 
haps because of it, all was not serene 
at Camp Columbia this summer. In 
final papers evaluating the program, 
almost all the students applauded the 
results of their intensive English train¬ 
ing, but lamented the isolation and 


dreariness of the camp. There were 
numerous complaints about the lack 
of reference books, study areas, snack 
bars, decent swimming, and women. 

The dormitory facilities were de¬ 
crepit. Rooms lacked doors and desks 
and chairs. The camp is "smack in. the 
middle of nowhere" groaned one stu¬ 
dent. Egress, had there been any place 
worth going to, would have depended 
on two feet, since the participants 
were not permitted to bring cars. 

One man noted sadly that many 
of his fellows were not used to "the 
boring life," and that "practical jokes, 
noisy radios at night, and fights began 
to occur." 

Although participants came from 
all areas of the nation, most lived in 
cities. Otherwise, one would be hard- 


put to type them. The group was di¬ 
verse enough to include one Spanish- 
American who would "take the streets 
of New York any day to the weeds of 
Camp Columbia," a white football 
player from New England who "read 
only one book a year in high school" 
and "thought it would take five years 
to get through the nine book reading 
list," but was pleased to find he was 
"doing okay;" and an afro-haired 
black from a northwestern state who 
"enjoyed camp" but was eager "to be 
in the center of things on campus." 
Like most Camp Columbians, this stu¬ 
dent had been accepted elsewhere. 
He chose Columbia because of the 
"good financial deal which takes the 
burden off my parents." He has ten 
brothers and sisters. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


23 







FRATERNIZING: Assistant Professor of 
English Michael Rosenthal laughs it up 
with two of his students. 


UNIFORM: Casual summer attire 
was the rule in Camp Columbia 
classrooms. 

Melvin Burwell, Special Assistant 
to Dean of the College Carl Hovde, 
is in charge of the camp program, 
which has now existed for two years. 
In 1969 the $20,000 needed to finance 
the special summer session for under¬ 
prepared students came half from the 
Urban Center and half from the Col¬ 
lege. This year Columbia assumed fis¬ 
cal responsibility alone, with the 
Higher Educational Opportunity Pro¬ 
gram contributing some money for 
New York State residents. Burwell esti¬ 
mates that the program (including the 
$400 earning replacement stipend 
which is applied toward fall tuition) 
costs about $1,000 per student. 

A follow-up on the mid-term 
grades of 1969 camp participants 
showed considerable variance. One 


foreign student with a verbal SAT 
score in the 200s had achieved a B+ 
average. A student with a verbal SAT 
score in the 500s had a C average. 
Most camp graduates had received 
mainly Cs in their courses with a smat¬ 
tering of Bs and Fs. 

Burwell reports that at the end of 
last year, ten per cent of the 78 fresh¬ 
men admitted with verbal scores be¬ 
low 550 (formerly considered the 
minimum necessary to do Columbia 
work) had made the Dean's List. 

The three English instructors were 
all returnees from the 1969 summer 
program. Associate Professor George 
Stade, unofficial head of the trio, was 
originally slated to teach only those 
'students without special problems, 
'i.e. those students with "normally" 


MESS HALL: Students and 
faculty at Camp Columbia take their 
meals together. 

high SATs who had come to get the 
course out of the way before fall. 
Since there were only three people in 
this category, Stade added four reme¬ 
dial students to his group, a move 
which he found successful. "Poor ex- 
pressors learned a great deal from the 
examples of good students," Stade re¬ 
ports. "Good students learned some¬ 
thing about the difficulty of expres¬ 
sion, and how rough it can be to 
communicate with people from other 
environments."' 

Assistant Professor Michael 
Rosenthal and Instructor Peter Glass- 
man both instituted some changes in 
their teaching this summer. Their 
courses, they agree, were stiffer; and 
they, personally, were less lenient. 
"Last year we were to quick to praise," 


24 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






SID SATTLER 



PASS TENSE: English Professor 
George Stade joins his students in 
a football game. 


comments Glassman. "This summer 
we tried to use grades in a more real¬ 
istic way." 

The 1970 Camp Columbia session 
lasted a week longer than the 1969 
program. Students were required to 
write six compositions weekly, and 
each participant had a daily tutorial. 
According to Glassman, improvement 
was evident in grammar, spelling, and 
paragraphing, but some participants 
still began classes this fall with below- 
par writing skills. 

All three instructors, while gen¬ 
erally pleased with the results, agree 
that attempting to compensate for 12 
years of faulty schooling in five weeks 
was a Herculean task. Burwell would 
like to extend the benefits of Camp 
Columbia by instituting a "cluster" 



DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS: 
Most participants were anxious to do well. Many, like 
this one, studied in their spare time. 


system, whereby small groups of 
academically disadvantaged students 
who need assistance during the year 
would meet regularly with an upper¬ 
classman to discuss scholastic and 
social problems. Hopefully, a student 
in academic difficulty would recog¬ 
nize his problem early and not be 
ashamed to ask for tutoring before 
disaster set in. 

Prof. Stade stresses that disad¬ 
vantaged students encounter non- 
academic frustrations, such as im¬ 
mense economic pressures, which can 
affect their performances in the class¬ 
room. He has also discovered that stu¬ 
dents from underprivileged areas are 
likely to enter Columbia with different 
intellectual data than middle class 
whites. "I can't allude to as wide a 


background in teaching ghetto kids," 
Stade explains, "but they're more in¬ 
telligent about the pretenses you need 
to survive, more forgiving of vanity, 
and more intelligent about family life 
and conflict. They also understand 
implicit class attitudes better." The 
College, he insists, "needs and bene¬ 
fits from the new points of view these 
kids exhibit." 

Undoubtedly Columbia College 
does use to its own advantage the di¬ 
verse perspectives of minority stu¬ 
dents. The Camp Columbia program 
is committed to improving the verbal 
skills of these students so they may 
better use Columbia. Whether five 
weeks in the Connecticut wilderness 
can balance the scales has yet to be 
proved. o 


AROUND THE QUADS 


25 






WILLIAM MCGILL: 
THE FINDING OF 
THE PRESIDENT 

Columbia Has Changed Since Bill McGill 
Left For California—But So Has He. 

by the editors 


During the disturbances last May, a young alumnus struck up a conversation with an SDS member who 
was passing out leaflets in front of Ferris Booth Hall. They chatted for awhile about the University's problems 
until, inevitably, one of them brought up the name of incoming President William McGill. 

“He doesn't seem like a bad guy," ventured the alumnus. The SDSer eyed him coldly. “You don't under¬ 
stand," he replied, as if explaining something to a child. “The issue isn't whether he's good or bad, but 
whether he's smart." 

There are many at the University who would say amen to that remark, even though they don't share the 
politics of the young radical who uttered it. With the campus still divided by contending political factions, 
and a deficit of $11 million during the preceding fiscal year, the last thing Columbia needs is a nice guy in 
Andrew Cordier's vacant chair. And no-one seems to realize this better than William J. McGill. 

“I hope to avoid heavy-handedness," he told one recent visitor. “But I'm not so humane an administrator 
that I'd find it distasteful to be heavy-handed if that becomes necessary." 


26 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





ON STUDENTS AND STUDENT UNREST: 

"The combination of an open democratic society and an advanced technological state is creating an extraordinary social force 
unprecedented in our history. This force can be described as an alienated youth culture, hostile to scienqe and technology, and 
growing at a very rapid pace . . . It is interesting to observe that France has passed beyond its Vietnam and its Algeria, but student unrest 
persists ... One major consequence of an automated society is ... a profound change in the life-styles of young people. More and 
more time is required for their education . . . Colleges and universities are increasingly used as storage areas for bored young people 
who have no particular interest in or drive toward learning, but who feel that a college degree is essential to their future welfare. 

Many of them . . . (are) vaguely interested in helping their fellow man because no other occupations attract them. Those who have clear 
educational goals find themselves as trainees undergoing a long and arduous apprenticeship with reward only dimly visible and far 
ahead. They wonder why anyone should work for dimly visible objectives inside the system when all around them the social 
order seems to be decaying." — Address to the Alumni, Columbia University, June 2,1970 

"We are seeing the basic manifestations of two cultures in American universities. There is a growing gap of mutual incomprehension 
between the culture of technology and the culture of alienation on campus. This cultural gap obviously reflects the larger problems 
of a technological society . . . The growth of automation has put immense demands on the disenfranchised segments of American life: 
youth, the minorities, the aged. Now we are confronting a mass-scale youth movement, based in our universities and patterned after 
the alienated life of our cities. It is a culture of belief, commitment, and angry protest. It values the rapture of experiences of 
liberation more than rational discourse." — Testimony Before President's Commission on Student Unrest, Aug. 4,1970 

"It is just not possible to be young in these times and to be apathetic about the 
world we live in. It is not possible to be young and to fail to seek some kind of 
personal liberation. Liberation has become a mass movement among young 
people . . . Unless this movement toward personal liberation and rejection of 
entrapment by the technology is controlled, directed, and sublimated by those of us 
who are in a position to give leadership, no one can safely predict what will 
become of our institutions." — Address to the Alumni, Columbia University 

"When I was in college we wore soft tweed jackets and striped ties, and we 
smoked pipes. The girls in the colleges on the eastern seaboard thirty years ago 
wore their hair carefully brushed in the style decreed by Cafe Society . . . It is 
perfectly apparent that thirty years ago we were seeking to establish ourselves as 
young members of the establishment we aspired to enter. It is equally apparent that 
these young boys and girls in long hair and rough clothes are attempting to 
establish an impression of themselves as romantic vagabonds." 

— Speech Before the San Diego Historical Society, Dec. 13,1969 

"The subculture displays very considerable mysticism, romanticism, and 
irrationality. These are manifest in the dress, the drugs, the rock music, and the 
search for transcendental experience. It is almost a secular religion, and because it is 
almost a secular religion, and because it is a reaction to organization, it defies 
organization. Hence, those frightened members of the American public who have 
been denouncing this development as a conspiratorial communist effort can take 
heart from the thought that the mystical romanticism of our youth culture would 
drive any well trained communist disciplinarian to distraction." — Ibid. 



Such statements, which he has 
made in one form or another on sev¬ 
eral occasions since his appointment, 
come as a surprise to some of his for¬ 
mer colleagues in the psychology de¬ 
partment, where he taught from 1956 
until 1965, and which he served as 
chairman between 1960 and 1963. 
"Bill McGill was an active, lively, like¬ 
able Irishman," smiles one of them, 
"always ready to listen to a good story, 
also to get down to business. 

"Maybe," mused the colleague, 
"he fits the stereotype of the Irishman 
better now that he's making all these 
belligerent noises. He never made 
them here." 

A remarkable transformation ap¬ 
pears to have overtaken William J. 
McGill during his five years at the Uni¬ 
versity of California's San Diego cam¬ 
pus-first as professor, finally as 


Chancellor. Former associates here 
speak of his gregariousness, his out¬ 
spokenness, and his good nature, dis¬ 
arming and contagious — all seem¬ 
ingly spontaneous, but in reality 
carefully controlled, according to 
those who knew him well. "Part of his 
strength was that he came across as 
your best friend," one recalled not 
long ago. "Obviously, he couldn't 
have been everyone's best friend. He's 
a genuinely warm and considerate 
person, but his strategies are well- 
planned in advance, and he does a 
good job of stage-managing himself." 

Several anecdotes from those days 
illustrate the intensity of the man. 
Once, the story goes, he and another 
professor got into a heated debate at a 
faculty meeting while the chairman 
vainly called for order. "Bill always en¬ 
joyed a good argument," remarked 


the narrator, "but on a logical basis. 
He never used polemics, or took un¬ 
fair advantage." Eventually the chair¬ 
man, lacking a gavel, brought a book 
down hard against the table, and both 
men stopped in mid-sentence, 
startled. McGill had become so deeply 
involved in the discussion that he had 
lost, for the moment, all conscious¬ 
ness of his surroundings. 

These qualities — the basic good 
nature, the intensity, the surface 
spontaneity — still persist. But old 
friends have begun to notice a new 
side of Bill McGill. "When he was 
here," according to one, "he never 
stopped grinning, even during an 
argument. In recent photos, he's 
looked grimmer than I'd ever seen 
him. But I guess that's part of the new 
image." Another part of the new 
image, even more startling to many, is 


WILLIAM McGILL 


27 










ON STUDENTS AND STUDENT UNREST: 
"We have been forced to recognize that much of what our generation believed 
naively about opportunity and equality in American life was platitudinous. The war, 
the violence, the racism, the corruption evident at very high levels of business and 
government have produced deepening moral concerns. These are conditions that 
foster radicalism. Those who have had close contact with campus radicals 
recognize that they are idealists, often misdirected, but governed by ethical 
considerations that are not always cynically held." 
— Speech Before the San Diego Historical Society 


"The newspapers and the campus public relations officers are correct in identifying 
(the revolutionaries) as a tiny fraction of American campus life even in this 
tortured era. The problem is that these revolutionary groups form a leadership 
cadre able to capitalize on any difficulty arising on campus. Their effectiveness is 
greatly enhanced by the fact that the youth culture, that quarter or third of the 
student body, is alienated in varying degrees from the university and from the 
values of the American middle class." — Ibid. 


"Many of the young people who are so effective in articulating their dissent against 
the moral evils of modern American society, and who seek to band together in 
idealistic efforts to change these evils, have themselves fallen victim to that 
hypocrisy with which they so frequently charge us ... In the past two years I have 
seen enough cheating in the classroom, thievery in the dorms, and cruelty 
to other students to make me a bit skeptical. I express deep concern about the low 
value placed upon intellectual and personal honesty among students on today's 

campuses." — Ibid. 


"It is interesting that this gap is not so much a generation gap as it is a gap between 
the colleges and the rest of society . .. For example, the intense opposition to the 
Vietnam war among young people is one of the most characteristic aspects of the 
generation gap. But it must be the case that there are very considerable divisions 
between young people in the university and young people outside the university on 
this issue. Moreover, any close observer of modern university life will tell you 
that faculty are picking up the attitudes, language, and informal styles of dress 
affected by the students. Hence, the generation gap is in some respects a 

town-gown gap." — Ibid. 


"The 'student power' movement... is neither violent nor revolutionary, but simply 
seeks to set up the student body as an adversary element in campus life so 
that student opinion must be heeded." — Ibid. 


the tough tone of some of his state¬ 
ments. A former Columbia colleague 
remembers that “as chairman, he was 
energetic and lively, and a perfect 
gentleman, but none of us thought of 
him as a takeover guy or a tough nut. 
In fact, I told the search committee 
that I didn't see him in the role of 
strong fighter —although I certainly 
didn't deny that he had the potential 
to develop into one." 

One of the questions which re¬ 
main to be resolved is whether the 
tough talk is indeed part of a new 
image — cultivated as carefully as the 
exuberant good fellowship — or rep¬ 
resents a true change of personality, or 
else, perhaps, the emergence of 
hidden qualities already there: “a 
throwback to the days when he was a 
rough kid on the streets," as an ex¬ 
colleague suggested. The question 


will not go unanswered for long. "I 
expect to be tested," McGill has said. 
"People will want to see if I can be 
scared out of the job. Well, I'm pre¬ 
pared for that." 

"There was never that degree of 
self-reference when we knew him," 
muses a puzzled former associate. 
"It's as if he feels himself almost called 
upon to carry out a role." And indeed 
there is a sense of mission about the 
way in which the President discusses 
his new responsibilities. If he harbors 
any doubts about his ability to carry 
out that mission, he hasn't let on to 
anyone. 

There were few doubts, either, 
among the members of the search 
committee which selected him. The 
committee, consisting of faculty mem¬ 
bers, trustees (who usually met sepa- 



28 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


SID SATTLER 











ON MILITANT PROTESTS AT COLUMBIA: 


I 


"I sense a feeling of urgency at Columbia pressing us to turn serious attention to 
major concerns of our own and to avoid symbolic conflict aimed primarily at 
arousing public opinion ... Most people here sense a powerful public distaste for 
strikes, militant picketing and building occupations. Such activities in behalf of 
peace in Southeast Asia markedly diminish the ability of our faculty and students to 
convince the nation that our anguish over continuance of the war is a deeply held 
and responsible position." - Statement to the Press, Sept. 9,1970 


"I have attended no large-scale conferences on security, nor have I discussed 
proposals to introduce new measures or tactics that are radical departures from 
those used in the past... Our principal means of controlling disruption 
at Columbia was, is, and will remain the ardent desire of faculty and students to 
concentrate on educational problems rather than on conflict." - Ibid. 


ON THE COMMUNITY: 

"Columbia does not seek to wall itself off from the problems of urban society. 

We cannot simply expand against the interests of the community that surrounds us. 
Instead, we seek to convince our neighbors that their future and ours are 
intertwined and mutually dependent. Columbia cannot survive in a state of hostility 
or even detachment from the problems that afflict New York City. We must begin to 
contribute to the solution of these problems and therein lies the key to our 
own future." — Ibid. 


ON THE ALUMNI: 

"Older alumni, returning to a university campus, must learn the new rules of 
the game. They must be prepared to shout down the hecklers in fine old-fashioned 
democratic style. They must, however, remain in control of themselves. They 
must forbear the delights of swinging at their errant neighbors, and above all they 
must let us professionals handle the tough situations .. 

-Address to the Alumni, Columbia University 


"College presidents usually speak to alumni in utterly trivial terms. The discussions 
exhibit a characteristic banality that is fairly well understood by both parties ... 

I have always wondered why the president and the alumni should wallow 
in such triviality— Ibid. 




rately), and — for the first time in Co¬ 
lumbia's history — students was as¬ 
sembled during the fall semester of 
1968. A year later, in September 1969, 
its prospects were in disarray after the 
stunning and well-publicized rebuff 
administered by Vanderbilt Chancel¬ 
lor Alexander Heard, who turned 
down the Presidency over the sum¬ 
mer. Now the selection process had to 
be started again from scratch, and 
some committee members were get¬ 
ting scared. 

"We felt," said one teacher, "that 
this was crucial, that if we didn't get 
the right guy, there might not be a 
successor. That's why we took so long. 
But by last autumn, we were starting 
to worry. We knew we had to find 
someone pretty soon." 

The name of Chancellor William 
J. McGill of San Diego had been sub¬ 


mitted to the committee at the very 
onset of the search the year before, by 
two members of the psychology de¬ 
partment, one of them a former col¬ 
league of McGill's. "We didn't follow 
him up then," a committee member 
explains, "because he had just started 
at San Diego, and hadn't built up any 
kind of track record. He began to look 
better as he went along." 

The process of paring down the 
list of prospects which emerged in the 
wake of the Heard debacle was time- 
consuming. Committee members had 
agreed upon certain criteria. They 
were seeking a youngish man, under 
55 years of age, who had had some ex¬ 
perience in educational administration 
as a ranking officer of either an institu¬ 
tion of higher learning or an educa¬ 
tional foundation. They preferred, 
also, someone who had previously 


WILLIAM McGILL 


29 












ON HIMSELF: 

"Three years ago I was an honest academic. I worked in a rather remote area of mathematical psychology. I was serious about my work 
and deeply attached to it. Yet in only three years I have formed a similarly deep commitment to what I am about to do. I gave up 
my work because three years ago I saw that the scholarly traditions I revere, the kind of humane society that I want to build, are 

threatened as they have never been threatened before, at least in my lifetime." 

- Address to the Alumni, Columbia University 

"There wasn't very much of me when I came to Columbia but the standards of this institution made me a mature academic person. 

I owe this University everything that my later life has become, and I want to repay that debt." 

- Ibid. 

"A man who is humane in dealing with tough and nasty provocations is just going to be steam-rollered and destroyed. You can 
see the shattered reputations of college administrators all across the country who tried to make friends with their enemies. I know that, 
and I'm not going to be taken in by that kind of thing. On the other hand, when I get into that mood and when the tough 
provocations are coming, I become in some respects a dangerous man who needs to be curbed. You see. I'm looking for trouble, too, 
and I have to be able to flip that switch quickly enough in order to be able to respond to the anguish - that anguish is real and 

it's there and it's all over the campus today." 
- Quoted in New York Times Sunday Magazine, Sept. 6,1970 

ON THE CURRICULUM: 

"Higher education in this country is showing signs of rigidity and divorcement 
from the needs of the society. These are problems that seem to call for major 
educational reform. We need to experiment with undergraduate curricula. We need 
to provide the means for rapid advancement on grounds of ability rather than 
arduous apprenticeship. Finally, we need to integrate the university with the major 
professions so that professional training becomes easier and more attractive to 
students who now seem to be turned off by what seems to be an infinite 
educational regress." — Statement to the Press 

"If a scientist or a physician is not considered adequately trained to do his 
professional work before he is 35 to 40 years of age, we have a problem and we had 
better begin to do something about it soon because the situation is not going to 
correct itself. We need major educational reform ...” 
— Testimony Before President's Commission On Student Unrest 

ON FINANCES: 

"Columbia University has been running in red ink for the past several years. It is 
perfectly clear that the University is overextended and that we must begin to confront 
our fiscal problems immediately. We are going to take a hard look at our 
administration and our academic programs with a view to cutting costs substantially. 
We must find new sources of funding. There is a particular need for gifts and 
endowments matched to the present needs of the University." 

— Statement to the Press 



been affiliated with Columbia. "You 
don't want a guy who'll need years to 
learn about the place," a committee¬ 
man observed. A few raised the pos¬ 
sibility of promoting someone from 
inside the University, "except," as one 
explained, "that there's likely to be a 
strong polarization about such people, 
and they may have too much of a 
stake in existing policies to be objec¬ 
tive." 

In addition, faculty members on 
the committee wanted a person who 
had been, not only a teacher, but a 
bona fide scholar, and the students 
wanted someone who would listen to 
their views respectfully. "Interestingly, 
though, they also wanted a strong 
figure," commented one observer. Of 
course, student committee members 
were almost by definition moderates 


(an older colleague described them as 
"liberal activists"), since the true 
radicals would have nothing to do 
with the search. 

Once this initial screening had re¬ 
duced the number of hopefuls from 
nearly fifty to about ten or fifteen, the 
real spadework began. Students pored 
through bacj< issues of the New York 
Times, while faculty members scruti¬ 
nized scholarly journals. Teachers and 
trustees interviewed contacts on other 
campuses, as discreetly as possible in 
order to minimize the inevitable 
rumors. Students, too, solicited the 
views of their counterparts elsewhere. 
"It was tricky work," a professor re¬ 
called, "because the problem of ob¬ 
taining reliable information often 
conflicted with the problem of main¬ 
taining confidentiality." Premature 


publicity could sabotage everything, 
because of the pressures to which the 
administrator would be subjected at 
his own school. 

These preliminary investigations 
consumed the early months of the 
fall semester. By November, William 
J. McGill has emerged as the strong¬ 
est candidate. 

"The amazing thing about McGill 
was that he was the only man of 
whom we heard nothing negative," a 
professor remarked. "Usually, when 
the news starts to leak out, all the 
skeletons come out of the closets. 
But the feedback from the California 
university system was just fantastic." 
Praise came even from Sacramento, 
the state capital. True, Governor 
Ronald Reagan and members of his 
administration did not fall over one 


30 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










ON VIETNAM AND THE MILITARY 


"The men most deeply involved (in the formulation of policies which produced Vietnam) were the second line officials of the 
executive and state departments during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The ultimate irony is that the most influential of 
these officials were drawn from universities. We see that universities now protesting the Vietnam involvement were themselves 
deeply implicated in the development of adventurist policies in statecraft which left our military with a mission almost impossible to 
carry out and which in the long run divided our country and alienated our youth. Many of these officials ... were young academics 
playing at statecraft and they made very serious mistakes . . . People who express alarm at the developing protests against the 
war in our universities are, I think, unaware of the burden of guilt that the academic community feels for what it has contributed to 
our national life in the last 25 years." - Speech Before the San Diego Historical Society 


"Unike our students I have a very great deal of respect for the American military. Whatever their own feelings about the wisdom 
of our policies and the constraints which our national leaders have placed upon them in carrying on our operations in Vietnam, they 
do not direct their professional knowledge and their professional skill against the civilian arm of the government. They accept their 
orders and they carry them out, even in frustrating and profoundly difficult circumstances such as those we confront in 
Southeast Asia where safe havens are provided for our enemy in the shadows of Laos and Cambodia, protected, at least in a major way, 
by our own government's policy." — Ibid. 


"In Vietnam, we have suffered no major military reverses, but we have sacrificed 
much of what we have always stood for before the rest of the world. The President 
is and must be governed by the rational chess moves of the Cold War. Most students 
are governed by the idealism and moral sensitivities we have taught them. 

It is a simple but essential difference in perspective." 

— Testimony Before President's Commission On Student Unrest 


"So long as the campus continues to be a place of privilege and refuge from military 
service, radical leadership among college students will continue ... The only 
real solution to this problem lies in the elimination of military conscription except 
in times of grave national emergency." — Ibid. 


"There is no feasible way to liquidate our Vietnam involvement overnight or 
in a few months without inviting the most disastrous consequences. Thus the 
moratorium presents the danger of further dividing the country without a clearly 
expressed alternative to Washington's wish for phased withdrawal." 

— Speech Before the San Diego Historical Society 



another in their eagerness to issue 
testimonials. But, as one Regent put 
it, "McGill was on the bottom of the 
list of those to be fired." 

Next came the tasks of sounding 
out the candidate himself, and, after 
that, arranging to have him come to 
New York to be interviewed. Both 
required the diplomatic skills of a 
Metternich and the coyness of Mar¬ 
vell's mistress. "You have to go about 
it informally," a committee member 
explained, "so it doesn't seem as if 
the guy is begging. You can't just 
come out and say, 'We'd like to inter¬ 
view you.' Instead, you have to tell 
him, 'We're looking at a lot of 
people; do you think you'd like to 
talk to us?' That way nobody feels 
he's committed himself to anything." 

A few professors were opposed 


to holding any interviews at all, for 
fear that the brevity and forced na¬ 
ture of the encounter would give rise 
to false impressions. But their col¬ 
leagues on the committee, especially 
the students, insisted. "Students, after 
all, are especially sensitive to how a 
man interacts in just that sort of 
situation," one teacher speculated. 

McGill arrived in New York in 
November for a long weekend. His 
first evening was given over to a 
quiet dinner with a group of trustees 
at a private club downtown. The next 
day, a Saturday, the prospective Presi¬ 
dent went through a grueling series 
of interviews with members of the 
search committee: first students and, 
later, faculty. Afterward, he spoke 
separately to several administrators, 
University senators, and old personal 


friends. The meetings took place in 
the candidate's hotel suite. "There 
was no grilling," one participant re¬ 
members, "just a lot of drinking and 
eating, and a great deal of question¬ 
ing back and forth. He was trying to 
find out about Columbia at the same 
time that we were trying to find out 
about him." People circulated in and 
out of the room as the discussions 
were going on. At times, as many as 
15 crowded into the suite; at other 
times, the number dwindled to just 
three. On Sunday, McGill's last full 
day in New York, he met once again 
with the trustees. He had already 
spoken to several of them over din¬ 
ner the previous Friday, but the mem¬ 
bers of that party were sufficiently 
impressed with him to want him to 
see the others. 


WILLIAM McGILL 


31 







Reactions to the visitor were 
overwhelmingly favorable. Commit¬ 
teemen were struck by his diplomatic 
skills, his geniality, and his shrewd 
insights into individuals as well as his 
apparent grasp of the University's 
problems. “He seemed to under¬ 
stand," said one, “that the place 
needed a housecleaning, that it had 
been drifting too long." Many com¬ 
mented on his forthrightness in 
answering questions. “He didn't say 
different things to the different 
groups, the way some other people 
had done last year/' reports one pro¬ 
fessor. Another praised his willingness 
to tell his listeners what they didn't 
want to hear. "There was one trustee, 
very interested in sports, who asked 
him about intercollegiate athletics," 
the professor said. “McGill replied 


that he was more interested in in¬ 
tramurals. 

“Another time," the professor 
went on, “some students wanted to 
know whether he would ever call 
in the police, and when he answered 
yes, they asked him whether he 
wasn't putting property rights above 
people. He told them that the build¬ 
ings couldn't care less about who was 
inside them. He was concerned about 
the people who wanted to study 
there. 

“In the end," according to the 
professor, “the very ones whom he 
challenged were among his strong¬ 
est supporters. They liked him be¬ 
cause he is not the sort of man who 
will compromise his basic beliefs." 

Once the committee agreed that 
it was seriously interested, the next 


order of business was to invite the 
candidate back for a second look. 
This turned out to be a trickier mat¬ 
ter than it was the first time. The 
November visit had been, on its face, 
an exploratory one, with no com¬ 
mitments on either side. Now, how¬ 
ever, the committee was evidently in 
earnest, and McGill hesitated. "I'll 
come back," he reportedly told one 
member, “only if I'm sure I want to 
take it. I don't want to put you in a 
Heard-type situation." 

Then there began a waiting 
period of about a month, during 
which the committee phoned re¬ 
peatedly and the candidate kept 
stalling. When, in December, he 
agreed at last to return for another 
series of interviews, it was felt, says 
a professor, “that he had committed 


32 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


SID SATTLER 








CONSULTING A CONSTITUENCY: 
McGill meets with representatives of the 
Undergraduate Dormitory Council. 


himself at least morally to accepting 
the job if nothing else came up." 

McGill returned to New York 
later that month. The second visit, 
unlike the first, was taken up largely 
by meetings with various administra¬ 
tors and trustees. "McGill was con¬ 
cerned, not with personal perqui¬ 
sites, but with the amount of support 
he'd get from the trustees in evolving 
plans and meeting financial com¬ 
mitments," a committee member dis¬ 
closed. "It wasn't the sort of thing 
you could get very specific about, 
but he wanted it understood that he 
wasn't going to be head janitor. He 
even jotted a few things down, which 
he showed to the trustees, defining 
the nature and functions of the of¬ 
fice." 

Evidently McGill and the trustees 


arrived at an understanding, because 
a formal offer went out shortly after¬ 
ward. "We never cast secret ballots, 
Or anything like that," reports a mem¬ 
ber of the search committee. "The 
students and faculty got together, 
someone asked if there were any ob¬ 
jections to McGill, and when there 
weren't any, we told the trustees we 
liked him." There was no need for 
the trustee search committee to meet 
separately, since the trustees who 
served on the committee were also 
the most active and influential on the 
board. 

Another waiting period ensued, 
while the candidate mulled over the 
offer. At one point, he appeared to 
develop cold feet. "Some California 
people had begun to work on him, 
and Columbia seemed remote and 


in the past," explained one com¬ 
mitteeman. So a senior professor on 
the search committee flew out to 
California to speak to the Chancellor 
over a weekend, and McGill com¬ 
municated his acceptance toward the 
end of January. 

The committee members, too, 
were not without some doubts. Most 
revolved around the new president's 
style — "the California breeziness in¬ 
stead of Ivy League dignity," as one 
put it — and in particular his glad¬ 
handing of people and his occasional 
garrulousness. "He does come on 
strong, and I wish he'd be a little 
quieter sometimes," one conceded. 
But another suggested that the talk¬ 
ativeness is a function of his newness 
and his need to carve out an image 
for himself. "Besides," he said, "you 


WILLIAM McGILL 


33 








CHEERS: McGill clinks 

a glass with 

Law School alumnus. 


wonder whether you can divorce 
these qualities from the things which 
make him desirable." Even those who 
owned up to reservations did not op¬ 
pose the selection, and agreed that 
their overall response was positive. 

"There were several times when 
we panicked," summarizes one of 
them. "We didn't want to wait much 
longer, and if McGill hadn't panned 
out, I don't know whom we would 
have chosen. We even talked of 
lowering our sights and making an 
offer to one of our own people, 
the way other schools have done." 

But the selection of William 
McGill, he emphasizes, was not a 
panic choice. "We liked him so much 
that we would have made the offer 
even if we hadn't felt pressured. 

"Although," he adds, expressing 


a sentiment which has been voiced 
by many, "you sometimes wonder 
whether any man is big enough to be 
President of Columbia these days." 

It will take a big man indeed to 
cope with Columbia's problems: the 
yawning deficit, in part a result of 
restricted endowments; the almost 
hydra-like proliferation of divisions 
and departments, some of which 
duplicate one another's functions; 
the widening gulf between under¬ 
graduate and graduate education; the 
unhealed scars of the '68 rebellion, 
including the running conflict with 
the Morningside community. 

McGill's onetime associates seem 
to think that he's big enough if any 
man is. Perhaps even more important, 
Bill McGill thinks so too. His self- 


confidence is as contagious as his 
grin. Even when he was a teacher, an 
ex-student remembered, "He was 
always turned on with himself, as well 
as with his subject, and enjoyed 
snowing us with incomprehensible 
equations. He didn't do it maliciously, 
but just to put us down a little." An 
interviewer asked him recently what 
sort of person should succeed him at 
San Diego. Without hesitating, he re¬ 
plied, "Someone just like me." 

Understandably, he is reluctant 
to commit himself in advance to spe¬ 
cific policies while he is still so new 
to the job. For this reason, perhaps, 
some of his public pronouncements 
have seemed more platitudinous than 
his listeners would prefer. He has, 
however, announced in no uncertain 
terms that the University is in financial 


34 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 









RETURN OF THE NATIVE: 

The President is right at home on 
New York's Lexington Avenue. 


difficulty because it is "over-ex¬ 
tended/' and that he plans a belt¬ 
tightening which will include the re- 
evaluation and perhaps even the 
elimination of the costlier divisions. 
He has also committed himself to the 
strengthening of undergraduate edu¬ 
cation. At San Diego, he recalls, he 
instituted a policy whereby depart¬ 
ments which refused to do their fair 
share of undergraduate teaching 
found themselves short-ended in the 
budget. 

McGill's background is not what 
one would expect of a Columbia 
President. Catholic, the product of 
New York City and its parochial 
schools (he holds both his A.B. and 
M.A. from Fordham), he takes com¬ 
mand of an Ivy League university 
which sorely needs new perspectives. 


The red clenched fist, symbol of 
revolution, still gleams against the 
blue background of a U.S. mailbox 
outside Low Library, headquarters of 
the central administration. The juxta¬ 
position underscores the task of 
reconciliation which confronts him. 

It remains to be seen whether so 
outspoken and at times aggressive an 
individual can conciliate rather than 
polarize. (At a meeting last year for 
Columbia alumni from the San Fran¬ 
cisco Bay area, some remarks of his 
precipitated a brawl between older 
and younger graduates, which the 
President would later describe as 
"just like a John Wayne movie") 
Columbia will discover the answer 
during the next few months, and the 
nation as well as the University has 
a stake in the outcome. Q 



WILLIAM McGILL 


35 


SID SATTLER 







HOUSE ON THE HILL I 



60 MORNINQSIDE DRIVE, NOME 07 COLUMBIA PRESIDENTS SINCE 49*2, 
D OVBLES AS A RESIDENCE AND AN EMBASSA. 


One of New York's most stately 
and beautiful mansions has acquired 
new tenants. On September 1, 
William J. McGill moved with his 
family into 60 Morningside Drive, 
home of Columbia presidents for 
more than half a century. 

Some 60 years ago, Nicholas Mur¬ 
ray Butler felt the need for distinctive 
facilities to conduct large meetings, 
entertain students and faculty mem¬ 
bers, and receive distinguished visitors 
to the campus. The Butler residence 
on 30th Street was too remote to 
serve the purpose, so the President 
obtained from the Board of Trustees 
authorization to build a new house on 
Morningside Heights. The design was 
entrusted to the noted architectural 
firm of McKim, Mead, and White, and 
F. Augustus Schermerhorn donated 
the money. William Mitchell Kendall, 
the chief designer, realized that even 
large private houses are not equipped 
to accommodate scores of guests. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the mansion took the shape 


of an embassy, with a huge tiled 
kitchen in the basement, and several 
rooms on the first floor to handle the 
hats and coats of visitors. 

Kendall made the structure con¬ 
form to the architectural style of the 
original Columbia buildings: Italian 
Renaissance, with a granite base, walls 
of overburned brick, and exterior de¬ 
tails of Indiana limestone. The plot on 
which it rests is only 78 by 37 feet, and 
borders upon the Faculty Club and 
Johnson Hall, the graduate women's 
dormitory. From its upper stories, one 
can look out over Harlem—a symbolic 
juxtaposition these days —and catch 
glimpses of Central Park and its sur¬ 
rounding tall buildings to the south¬ 
east. 

The first two floors consist of 
stately, high-ceilinged rooms for offi¬ 
cial use, the third (reached by a small 
elevator) houses the personal suite for 
the President and his family, while the 
fourth contains guest and servants' 
rooms. The roof, once given over to a 


loggia, now boasts a penthouse and 
open terrace gardens. A gallery on the 
ground floor, parallel to the facade, 
links the library on the left with the 
handsome official dining room to the 
right. In the library, President Andrew 
Cordier would later display a large sil¬ 
ver tray signed by all the heads of state 
of the United Nations, presented to 
him upon his retirement from that 
body, and the Grayson Kirks would 
place portraits of their three royal visi¬ 
tors: Queen Mother Elizabeth of 
Great Britain, Queen Juliana of the 
Netherlands, and Queen Fredericka of 
Greece. In between are various service 
rooms and a family dining room. 

A flight of marble stairs, illumi¬ 
nated by a tall window on the west, 
leads from the gallery to the middle 
of three rooms on the second floor 
which open into each other, forming 
a suite spacious enough for the large 
reception which follows Commence¬ 
ment. Goebelin tapestries, given to 
Dr. Butler by the French Government, 


36 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 









DIET-RITE: Main staircase is 

guaranteed to keep occupants in shape. Stairs lead 

to official reception rooms. 


HIGH NOTE: Music room 
on the second floor. 


HOUSE ON THE HILL 


37 





I 



CONTINUITY: Ellen McGrath (right), 
talking to Mrs. Andrew Cordier, has served at 
the mansion for 31 years. 



2 

WAITING FOR McGILL: Center room 
on second floor is used for teas 
and receptions. 


once hung in the stairwell. Older 
alumni will recall Dr. and Mrs. Butler 
and his daughter Sarah standing in the 
center room to receive them at the 
annual dance for Barnard and Colum¬ 
bia undergraduates. Today, these 
rooms contain several valuable por¬ 
traits of Columbia personalities. One, 
painted in 1818 by John Trumbull, de¬ 
picts Professor of Greek and Latin 
William Cochran; another, a copy of 
the original Copley in the King's 
Crown Room of the Columbiana Li¬ 
brary, shows Columbia's second Presi¬ 
dent, Myles Cooper. A third is of Sir 
Charles Hardy, Governor of the Prov¬ 
ince of New York. He is seen as he 
appeared in 1754, when the College 
was founded, in a copy of the original 
Romney now at Greenwich Hospital 
on the Thames River near London. 

The first visitors were trustees who 
attended a housewarming on October 
7,1912. But the real social debut took 
place on December 3, when President 
Butler '82 held a smoker for about 100 
fellow-members of the alumni society 


called the Early Eighties. The guests 
sang songs around the piano, and gave 
a rousing Early Eighties cheer for Mrs. 
Butler. 

Shortly after the mansion opened, 
the Butlers launched a series of for¬ 
mal dinner parties, at which they 
mixed academic figures, political not¬ 
ables, and foreign dignitaries. Twelve 
couples were usually invited. Guests 
arrived at precisely two minutes be¬ 
fore eight, found their table places on 
a plan, and received cards designating 
their dinner partners. After the meal, 
the men withdrew with Dr. Butler to 
the library for coffee, cigars, #nd li¬ 
queurs, then rejoined the ladies up¬ 
stairs in the drawing room until the 
party ended at exactly ten-thirty. 

Each visitor signed his name in a 
guest book. Now stored in the Colum¬ 
biana Collection, it reads like a Who's 
Who of the period: Henri Bergson, 
Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schurz, Edwin 
Gould, Alfred Noyes, Henry Holt, 
Count von Bernstorff, Alexis Carrel, 
John Purroy Mitchell, Paul Elmer 


More, George W. Wickersham, Walter 
Damrosch. 

Dr. Butler occupied the mansion 
during 33 of his 43 years in office. 
Upon his retirement, the trustees gave 
him permission to stay on there, and 
when he died, in 1947, his body rested 
in state in the gallery on the first floor, 
watched by high-ranking University 
officials, as older members of the Co¬ 
lumbia community filed past to pay 
their respects. 

Acting President Frank D. Facken- 
than '06 never lived in the mansion. 
When the Eisenhowers came to Co¬ 
lumbia in May, 1948, the trustees 
authorized extensive reconstruction 
of the private apartments. The roof 
was refitted, and President Dwight 
Eisenhower used it to paint and play 
with his grandchildren, to the delight 
of graduate students looking down 
from Johnson Hall. Mrs. Eisenhower 
had the walnut paneling in the dining 
room lightened to gray-blue, a pat¬ 
tern she later introduced at the White 
House, and the main rooms were filled 


38 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







ROOM AT THE TOP: Johnson Hall 
looks down upon the 
mansion's open air terrace. 


with decorations and presentation 
swords tendered to the war-time 
leader by appreciative allies. Acade¬ 
micians were sometimes startled to 
behold so many guns among the 
books. 

The Kirks moved in in March, 
1953. This was during an era when 
Uncle Sam, in his new role as world 
leader, discovered that 60 Morning- 
side could occasionally serve his pur¬ 
poses as well as those of the Univer¬ 
sity. Thus, the Kirks held dinners at 
which the guest list was augmented on 
occasion by official interpreters and 
F.B.I. agents scoured the premises 
from drawing room to kitchen. Per¬ 
haps the highlight of their 15-year stay 
was a luncheon following the final 
Convocation of the 1954 Bicentennial, 
attended by the Queen Mother of 
Great Britain, Chancellor Konrad 
Adenauer of Germany, Foreign Minis¬ 
ter Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, and 
other dignitaries. 

The Andrew Cordiers entertained 
in markedly different style. Significant¬ 


ly, Dr. Cordier's first dinner guests 
were student leaders, followed not 
long afterward by 35 Harlem clergy¬ 
men. More usually, however, the for¬ 
mer United Nations official enter¬ 
tained community leaders at lunch¬ 
eons. The mansion, designed in a 
more opulent age as an elegant private 
residence, became under the Cordiers 
almost a public building, to be used 
for the benefit of the entire University 
community. The McGills have in¬ 
dicated that they view it in the same 
way. 

The house has been staffed, over 
the years, by five to six servants, who 
live on the premises. Oldest in service 
is Ellen McGrath, waitress and parlor 
maid, who was originally trained by 
Mrs. Butler, and is now in her 31st year 
at 60 Morningside. The other servants 
include a butler, a houseman, an up¬ 
stairs maid and a cook. Major dinners 
are contracted out to a catering firm, 
which in recent years has been Daniel, 
on 30th Street in New York City. Sum¬ 
mer functions have always presented 


a problem, as only the private apart¬ 
ments are air-conditioned. The huge 
state rooms are cooled by giant fans. 

Expenses for upkeep, as well as 
for official entertainment, are borne 
by the University. The President and 
his family are responsible for personal 
items. Not infrequently, New York de¬ 
partment stores have lumped the two 
together in a single bill, to the exas¬ 
peration of successive occupants. 

No doubt the McGills will leave 
theirown unique imprint on the build¬ 
ing, as others have done before them. 
While it is too early to predict precise¬ 
ly what innovations they will bring to 
the 58-year-old mansion, 15-year-old 
Bill McGill jr.—the first youngster to 
live there in its entire history—has al¬ 
ready promised to make a few changes 
of his own, not in the state apartments 
but in the room assigned to him on the 
third floor. _y 

Richmond B. Williams, former Spec¬ 
tator editor-in-chief and Pulitzer Travel¬ 
ing Scholarship winner, was an executive 
with AT&T until his recent retirement. 


HOUSE ON THE HILL 


39 





























Roar Lion Roar 


FEASTING ON 
MEMORIES 

On the evening of September 22, 
more than 350 "friends and fans" of 
Columbia football gathered in Low 
Rotunda to relive the anguish and tri¬ 
umphs of the past hundred years. 

Shamelessly exhibiting the most 
blatant partisanship, the menu fea¬ 
tured a main course of sliced filet 
mignon of "Columbia" blue rib¬ 
bon beef. Auxiliary and subordinate 
courses included "Crimson" shrimp 
cocktail accompanied by "Big Red" 
sauce, "Indian" green olives, mixed 
"Raritan" nuts, "Nassau" carrots, 
spuds "New Haven" and tossed salad 
with "Quaker" oil dressing. With the 
opposition thus accounted for, six of 
Columbia's most outstanding former 
players then recalled the history of 


football at Morningside, and Lou Little 
addressed the gathering over a beeper 
phone. 

The first fifty years were covered 
by Howard Miller '17, a member of 
Columbia's undefeated 1915 team, 
who still holds the school record for 
most field goals in one game (four). 

Columbia football kicked off on 
November 12, 1870 with a 6-3 defeat 
at the, hands of Rutgers in only the 
third football game ever played. 
Throughout the next 35 years, the 
Lions played the game sporadically 
and with only indifferent success. 

Then, in 1905, the sport was abol¬ 
ished by the faculty on the ground 
that it was an academic nuisance. For 
ten years no football was played at 
Columbia. But in 1915, after a series 
of campus demonstrations sparked by 
editorials in the Columbia Spectator, 
the game was reinstated as a recog¬ 
nized student activity—with the stipu¬ 
lation that all contests were to be 


played on the school grounds on Sat¬ 
urdays or holidays only, and that all 
coaching positions be staffed by 
members of the Physical Education 
Department. 

The team responded with gusto, 
gratitude, and—for the only time ever 
—perfection. In 1915, the Lions took 
on St. Lawrence, Stevens, the Connec¬ 
ticut Aggies, N.Y.U. and Wesleyan, 
and defeated them all. 

In the 1920s, an era described by 
Ralph Furey '28, captain of the 1927 
team and former Athletic Director at 
Columbia, the Light Blue achieved a 
consistent level of respectability in 
Eastern football. In eight of the ten 
seasons, Columbia teams had records 
of .500 or better. In his speech, Furey 
said that he had received "more last¬ 
ing benefit from my association with 
Columbia football, as a player, than 
any other aspect of Columbia." He 
went on to call the sport "something 
that draws us together." 


40 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








































































VOICE FROM THE PAST: Former coach Lou Little speaks by 
beeper phone from Florida. John Bateman '35, a Little protege 
who now coaches at Rutgers, holds the receiver. 


THE NEW BREED: Football co-captain 
Mike Pyszczymucha addresses 
audience at Centennial Banquet. 


The 1930s were anything but de¬ 
pression years for Columbia football 
players, with three Football Hall of 
Famers: coach Lou Little, and quarter¬ 
backs Cliff Montgomery, who also ad¬ 
dressed the gathering, and Sid Luck- 
man, who went on to star with the 
Chicago Bears in the NFL. The high¬ 
light of that decade, and indeed the 
highlight of Columbia's entire gridiron 
history, was the 1934 Rose Bowl. The 
Lions went out to Pasadena such a de¬ 
cided underdog that they were re¬ 
ferred to in the local press as “Pomona 
High School." At the end of the game, 
the local press studied the scoreboard 
and no matter how many times they 
added up the final totals, the score 
always came out "Pomona" 7, Stan¬ 
ford 0. Montgomery and Al Barabas 
emerged as Columbia all-time greats, 
and the winning play, KF-79, is now 
almost as integral a part of Columbia's 
tradition as C.C. IIOIx. 

In the 1940s came more great 
passers, 1942 Maxwell Trophy winner 
Paul Governali and Gene Rossides; a 
great fullback, Lou Kusserow; an acro¬ 
batic pass receiver named Bill Swiaki; 
and one more incredible upset. In 
1947, Columbia was assigned the un¬ 
enviable task of playing a game with 


the United States Military Academy. 
By the time they got to Baker Field, the 
Cadets had rolled over 32 consecutive 
opponents. As the fourth quarter was 
coming to a close, Columbia looked 
like just another addition to West 
Point's string of victims. Then Rossides 
began to throw and Swiaki began to 
catch, and Army's streak was sud¬ 
denly over. Rossides, now an Assistant 
Secretary of the Treasury, came up 
from Washington to re-create that 
decade and that game at the centen¬ 
nial banquet. 

The teams of the 'fifties and 'sixties 
produced more outstanding quarter¬ 
backs, but few winners. Dr. Richard 
Carr, the first great quarterback of the 
1950s, recalled some of his own ex¬ 
ploits, and those of Mitch Price and 
Claude Benham. In 1953, Carr played 
every minute of every game and for 
that achievement earned the title of 
the "Iron Lion" from the New York 
press. Price was the last great player 
Lou Little produced. In 1956, after 27 
years at Columbia, Little retired as one 
of the most respected and well-liked 
coaches in the game. 

Dr. Archie Roberts, who wrapped 
up the 'sixties, was a freshman when 
Columbia won its only Ivy title. That 


the Lions did not win any under 
Roberts was no fault of his. By the time 
he had finished his career, he had 
broken almost every Columbia game, 
season, and career offensive record- 
only to see his own erased by Marty 
Domres four years later. Domres is 
now throwing footballs in San Diego 
under a six-figure contract negotiated 
for him by Gene Rossides, who at the 
time of Domres' graduation was a 
partner in the law firm of Royall, 
Koegel, Rogers and Wells. 

President William J. McGill fol¬ 
lowed former President Andrew Cor- 
dier to the speaker's platform, and 
pledged to "sustain Columbia athlet¬ 
ics and Columbia football." A coach, 
he wryly noted, has a greater chance 
to survive than a president. "There 
have been 11 coaches and 16 presi¬ 
dents," he said. 

The gravest note of the evening 
was struck by coach Frank Navarro. 
"The mediocrity of recent seasons is 
not something that a Columbia man 
can accept," he told the gathering. He 
called the Columbia football tradition 
as "deep, exciting, and impressive as 
that of any college in this country," 
and concluded that Columbia football 
"can and will be revitalized." 


ROAR LION ROAR 


41 




STARTING 

LION-UP 


The last time a Columbia varsity 
football team won more than two 
games in one season was in 1963, 
when it captured four. In each of the 
next five seasons it won precisely two. 
Last year it triumphed in one, was out- 
scored by its opposition at a rate of 
almost three to one, and was out- 
gained by slightly more than 1200 
yards from scrimmage. The Columbia 
varsity has been functioning primarily 
to assure a breather to Ivy League con¬ 
tenders, to provide the editors of 
Sports Illustrated's college football 
edition with at least one weekly op¬ 
portunity for a one-line put down, and 
to insure the Cleverest Band in the 
World a captive audience on Saturday 
afternoons. 

Columbia football fans at last have 
reason to hope that those days will 
soon be gone. And while it must be 
noted that the operative word has 
been "soon," there is even more than 
a modest possibility that Columbia 
will have established itself as a legiti¬ 
mate Ivy League nuisance by the end 
of the season. 

First, consider the quality of the 
returning experienced personnel. Ad¬ 
mittedly there are not many of them, 
but what is there is choice. The least 
conspicuous to the untutored eye and 
the most highly regarded by the 
coaching staff, his teammates, and as¬ 
sorted cognoscenti is center Mike 
Pyszczymucha. Pyszczymucha, the 
captain of the offensive unit, was an 
honorable mention All-American last 
year, was named second-team all-East, 
and was first team All-Ivy on both the 
Associated Press and United Press In¬ 
ternational wire service polls. He is 
5-11,233 pounds and used his size and 
reflexes efficiently enough to receive 
coaches' ratings of nearly 100% in 
each game last season. 

Assisting him at offensive guard 
will be his senior classmate, 6-2, 225- 
pound Mike Shane. One of Shane's 
biggest assets is the speed with which 
he pulls out of the line to lead end 
sweeps. Another major asset is that 
when he throws blocks on opposing 
players, they fall down with jarring 
abruptness. 



FLYING LION: Football co-captain 
Ray Ramsey. 



AGE OF JACKSON: Don 
lackson is latest in a long line 
of fine Columbia quarterbacks. 


Two of Columbia's better pass re¬ 
ceivers are 6-5, 230-pound senior tight 
end George Starke and junior flanker 
Mike Jones. Starke is a brutal blocker 
on running plays and he finished 
fourth in the league in pass receiving 
in 1969. His speed is more than ade¬ 
quate for his size and coach Frank 
Navarro will undoubtedly use him as a 
wide receiver when the situation war¬ 
rants it. Jones had a great freshman 
season in 1968, when he led the team 
in scoring, and will be a major threat 
on long pass plays since he runs the 
forty-yard dash in 4.6 seconds That's 
very, very fast He has nice hands and 
nicer moves. 

Over the past few seasons, when 
the opposition needed a healthy gain 
for a first down and did not wish to 
risk a pass, they would inevitably try 
an end sweep and just as inevitably 
pick up the required yardage. One 
reason they won't do that any more is 
named Bill Reed, who is 6-4, 210 
pounds and for the past two seasons 
has been honorable mention All-Ivy. 
He is one of the team's better pass 
rushers and a fine punter. 



COMBAT FATIGUES: 
Pszyczymucha again — 
differently attired. 


Columbia's other experienced de¬ 
fensive lineman is junior tackle Ed 
Miller. Miller, at 6-0 and 230 pounds, 
has more than enough strength to 
contend effectively with straight 
ahead running plays. Toward the end 
of last season he seemed to improve 
at avoiding the trap. He is one of 
Columbia's few high school All- 
Americans. 

Two years ago, Spencer Ramsey, 
who for some reason likes to be called 
Ray, won a starting job on the Colum¬ 
bia varsity at defensive end and 
promptly made All-Ivy. With that chal¬ 
lenge out of the way, the coaching 
staff made him into a linebacker where 
there existed an urgent shortage of 
competent personnel. He is the de¬ 
fensive captain now, and has mastered 
the art of pass drops with diligence 
and grace. He is, as befits his earlier 
experience, extremely nasty to running 
backs. 

Midway through last season, 
sophomore quarterback John Daurio 
had a problem. He was completing 
too many passes to people on the 
other team. But John Daurio was 


42 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




ON THE MOVE: 
Jackson snakes through Yale line. 

Bulldogs won, 32-15. 


strong and aggressive and tough, so he 
was tried at rover back, an assignment 
at which he has since excelled. Rover 
back is a position with rather nebulous 
responsibilities—sometimes it requires 
the brutality of a linebacker, and 
sometimes the agility of a defensive 
back. It is not a job for one with an 
identity crisis, and since Daurio's ego 
is as healthy as his body, Erik Erikson 
has taken his business elsewhere. 

Defensive backs Charles Johnson 
and Robbie Wroe have more specific 
responsibilities. Johnson, a junior, is 
the best tackier on the team and ac¬ 
cordingly the coaches have shifted 
him from cornerback to safety where 
he will be more strategically placed 
to help on running plays. Wroe, a sen¬ 
ior, is a fine ballhawk. Despite a lack 
of great speed, he intercepted eight 
passes last year to tie a Columbia 
record. His performance was good 
enough for a spot on the all-Ivy sec¬ 
ond unit. 

These, then, are the more promi¬ 
nent veterans. But the key to the Lions' 
success will be the performance of the 
sophomores. Sophomores are vigor¬ 


ous, enthusiastic and inexperienced. 
The quicker they learn, the more close 
games Columbia will play—and occa¬ 
sionally win. 

Quarterback Don Jackson of Stuy- 
vesant High School is the most out¬ 
standing sophomore of them all. 
Jackson threw nine touchdown passes 
in only six freshman games last year, 
and ran for three more. He is an ex¬ 
cellent runner and an even better 
passer. His one weakness is a tendency 
to throw into a crowd — nine of his 
passes were intercepted. But as a re¬ 
sult of his presence in the Columbia 
lineup, the Lions should not repeat as 
the Ivy League's least effective offen¬ 
sive unit. Playboy magazine,. which 
named Jackson the most promising 
sophomore in the east, agrees. 

Jackson's favorite receiver, Jesse 
Parks, will also be present in the Co¬ 
lumbia starting lineup. Parks caught 
28 passes last season, five of them for 
touchdowns, and averaged almost 18 
yards for each reception. He has ex¬ 
cellent speed and moves, but of even 
greater importance is the fact that he 
seems to possess the instinct for get¬ 


ting into the open. 

Steve Howland and Tom Hurley 
should improve the running attack im¬ 
measurably. Howland averaged almost 
six yards a carry with the freshmen and 
Hurley looks like an excellent all- 
around back who can catch the ball as 
well as run with it. 

The backs are going to need 
blocking help and 6-3, 220-pound 
tackle Mike Alberts should provide 
plenty. His most difficult job will prob¬ 
ably be pass blocking, the techniques 
of which are the hardest for young 
offensive linemen to master. 

There are no good football teams 
which do not play tough defense, and 
the Lions appear to have come up with 
a number of defensive players with 
tremendous potential, including two 
outstanding prospects at linebacker. 
One of the best is Paul Kaliades, a 6-0, 
210-pounder who will be starting in 
the middle for Columbia. Kaliades can 
do everything well right now. He is 
brutal against the run and, even more 
encouraging, he can play the pass. 

Mike McKenzie will team with 
Kaliades at one of the corner lineback- 


ROAR LION ROAR 


43 


MANNY WARMAN 





ing positions. He weighs only 185 
pounds and may need a bit more bulk, 
but he is very quick and very agile. His 
forte is blocking kicks. Last year he 
blocked three punts and an extra point 
try and no one can remember the last 
time an entire freshman team did that, 
much less a single individual. 

The best defensjy£ fine prospect 
is John Curtis, a 6-4,210-pound tackle, 
whose major responsibility will prob¬ 
ably be to provide an effective pass 
rush, another skill which in recent 
years has been exhibited at Columbia 
games only by the opposition. Herb 
Baker and John Hilstrom should lend 
some much-needed depth. John Leon- 
dis will help at defensive end. 

What all of these young players 
need more than anything else is time- 
time to develop, to eliminate the in¬ 
evitable mistakes of inexperience. If 
Columbia's record is not a winning 
one this season, it will not be for lack 
of talent. The talent is finally here and 
it should blossom eventually. The 
things to watch for now are the im¬ 
provement of the pass rush, the de¬ 
creasing frequency with which tackles 
get trapped on defense, the blocking 
efficiency of the offensive line, and the 
improving judgment of quarterback 
Don Jackson. Columbia should be a 
much better team by the end of the 
season. An important fact is that two 
of the league's weaker teams, Penn 
and Brown, are the ones against which 
the Lions will close the campaign. It 
will be the results of those games 
which will be most indicative of Co¬ 
lumbia's future prospects. 

"The light," said Robert S. Mc¬ 
Namara, in a completely different con¬ 
text, "is at the end of the tunnel." 
With the acknowledged risk of creat¬ 
ing a huge credibility problem, in this 
case there is light. There really is. 


COLUMBIA FOOTBALL 1970 


Columbia . . . 

. . 23 

Lafayette ... 

.. 9 

Columbia ... 

.. 22 

Princeton . . . 

. . 24 

Columbia . . . 

. . 28 

Harvard .... 

.. 21 

Columbia ... 

.. 15 

Yale . 

. . 32 

Columbia . .. 

. . 30 

Rutgers. 

.. 14 

Columbia ... 

.. 20 

Cornell . 

. . 31 

Columbia ... 

.. 0 

Dartmouth . . 

.. 55 

Columbia ... 

.. 14 

Penn . 

. . 21 

Nov. 21 


Brown 



44 


WIN SOME , 

LOSE SOME 

Last spring, the Columbia football 
team voted to dispense with its single 
day of spring practice to protest Amer¬ 
ican policy in southeast Asia. Later, the 
coaching staff signed a statement 
which said: "We honor and support 
without qualification the right of our 
players to take the action they have 
taken and deeply admire the respon¬ 
sible manner in which they have been 
conducting themselves." On a bulletin 
board in the coaches' office there is a 
picture of General Douglas MacArthur. 
Score a major victory for the prin¬ 
ciples of participatory democracy. 

This fall, all past and present Co¬ 
lumbia athletic letter winners were in¬ 
vited to vote for an all-time Lion foot¬ 
ball team. Two ballots were submitted 
in behalf of men who didn't play a 
single game. Score a minor setback 
for participatory democracy. 

CLAIM-JUMPER 

The Columbia coaching staff rates 
its high school prospects from one to 
five. A rating of "one" merits little 
more than sympathy, a rating of "five" 
indicates that the coaches will be com¬ 
peting with almost every school in the 
country because that young man has 
been deemed able to start as a sopho¬ 
more for any major college team. 

There are three obvious reasons 
why many talented high school foot¬ 
ball players are not interested in play¬ 
ing for Columbia. One is that many of 
them have trouble understanding the 
instructions on the SAT. The other two 
are Baker Field and the won-lost rec¬ 
ord. 

However, there are several more 
reasons why at least some intelligent 
and gifted athletes would consider 
coming here. Among them, of course, 
are the education, the city, jobs se¬ 
cured with the help of influential 
alumni, publicity provided by the New 
York Times and New York Post sports 
sections—staffed by a number of Co¬ 
lumbia graduates — and the ego-satis¬ 
faction of turning a loser into a winner. 
The problem in the past has been find¬ 
ing that small, natural constituency. 
Harvey Silver appears to be finding it. 


Harvey Silver coaches the light¬ 
weight football team, spends all of his 
spare time on the telephone, takes sick 
freshmen home with him for milk, 
cake and Coricidin, and organizes the 
Columbia recruiting effort. This year 
he has helped assemble one of the 
better freshman teams in the school's 
history, including five players with a 
"five" rating. 

Last spring, Silver went recruiting 
in California, a Columbia first. This 
confused many of the state's high 
school coaches, who had not heard of 
Columbia or were not sure exactly 
which Columbia Silver represented. It 
also confused Dartmouth head coach 
Bob Blackman, who has come to regard 
the West Coast as his own private 
shopping center. Blackman saw Silver 
at a high school awards dinner and 
asked, "What are you doing here?" 

"The same thing you are doing 
here," was the reply. 

Blackman reportedly was not 
amused. 

In California, Silver found line¬ 
backer Scott Denny from Menlo Park. 
Denny was recruited by Stanford, 
Colorado State, Oregon, Washington, 
Kansas State — and Dartmouth. He was 
brought to New York where he met 
Joe Namath at the Dick Cavett show, 
spent over an hour with Silver at the 
Columbia computer center, visited the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art with 
alumnus Dr. Jerry Klingon-they talked 
about brush strokes—and nearly got 
sick because he didn't take any heavy 
clothingwith him. When Lou Kusserow 
was in San Francisco with the NBC 
Game of the Week, he took Denny up 
to the press box with him. Columbia 
helped Denny get a summer job sail¬ 
ing a gondola at ABC's Marineland. 
Denny was impressed. Denny is here. 

Says Silver: "He was very aware of 
Domres, and would rather go to a 
school where he would be responsible 
for the team's improvement — and he 
really loves the city." Silver is sure that 
there will be more players from Cali¬ 
fornia in the future. The West Coast 
recruiters have been turning their at¬ 
tention increasingly to the junior col¬ 
lege football players and do not get 
around to the high schools until very 
late. "There is a real future for the Ivy 
League in California," says Silver. 

Two outstanding backfield pros¬ 
pects also could not resist the lure of 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





















MANNY WARMAN 



instead he chose to work with Dr. Neil 
Updyke at the Lamont Labs for about 
one-third the money. When he went 
for his interview, the admissions office 
wanted to talk football and he wanted 
to talk about photography." 

From a Hoboken railroad flat 
above a store in the midst of about 30 
factories comes Mike Peluso, pre-law, 
and a tackle. "This school is his great 
opportunity," says Silver. "The first 
thing he wanted to know was what he 
was going to get out of college besides 
football." Peluso's mother was worried 
about the academic pressure. Her son 
is not. He rejected offers from USC, 
Ohio State, Penn State and 57 other 
schools. 

"We have to do a lot of selling to 
get a winning team here," says Silver. 
"But every school has influential alum¬ 
ni and every school can offer a kid 
something. The biggest selling point 
we have is the students themselves. 
This is a place where athletes are now 
part of the community. People here 
respect each other for their differ¬ 
ences. This is what I would have 
wanted from a college." Silver went 
to school at Rhode Island. 

SILVER LINING 

This issue was not intended to be 
a monument to Harvey Silver, but he 
is, after all, the lightweight football 
coach and he has recruited a squad of 
50 players —many of whom have 
played high school football — and a 
staff of four assistant coaches. There 
is a better than even chance that these 
efforts will result in the Lions' first 
winning season ever. 

The quarterback is Carl Lecce, a 
fine passer. In Jack Surgen and John 
MacDonald, he has two all-league re¬ 
ceivers. In the backfield will be new¬ 
comers Bruce Jordan, Jerry Mason, 
Julian Gonzales and Larry Feher. All 
have-outstanding high school creden¬ 
tials. 

The offensive line is led by Tom 
Cleary, an honorable mention all¬ 
league selection last season. The de¬ 
fense will be anchored by three 
veteran linebackers: Rick Brooker, Jeff 
Fereday and Vince Grasso. 

Last year, Silver's first, the team 
won two of its six games. Before that, 
the squad had not won a game in three 
seasons. 


was named to the Bergen County (N.J.) 
all-decade team. When Manfredi was 
a junior, Penn State took him to the 
Orange Bowl. When he was a senior, 
he was recruited by Purdue, Princeton, 
Cornell, Syracuse, Michigan, Michigan 
State and Notre Dame. But Manfredi, 
whose uncle attended Columbia with 
Gene Rossides, made up his mind 
early and refused to come to the 
phone when other schools called. "He 
wants to be a great player," says Silver. 
"He wants to be a pro." Paul Zimmer¬ 
man, who played tackle at Columbia 
in the 'fifties and now covers the Jets 
for the New York Post, arranged with 
coach Weeb Ewbank to have Manfredi 
spend some time with the Jets. Al 
Atkinson told him, "If you want to be 
an All-American, New York is the 
place to become one." 

"He wants more than that," says 
Silver. "We could have gotten him a 
construction job over the summer, but 


New York City, according to Silver. 
They are George Georges, a prep 
school All-American at Moses Brown 
in New England, and Evan Forde, a 9.6 
sprinter, from Coral Gables. The Bos¬ 
ton College coach called Georges "the 
best athlete in New England." Exults 
Silver: "He has great balance as a 
runner, better than anyone at this 
school in years." Forde, who rejected 
offers from Miami of Florida and 
Florida State and a track scholarship 
from Duke, is the fastest human on the 
Columbia campus. He will most likely 
be used as a defensive back. "He 
comes from a black high school in 
Florida," says Silver. "He had to get to 
New York." 

Rich Manfredi is interested in 
medicine, oceanography, Africa and 
photography. He may also be the best 
football player on the freshman team. 
Last season he averaged nine yards per 
carry and captained the defense and 


SUPER SALESMAN: Harvey Silver 
coaches football lightweights and recruits 
for the varsity. 


ROAR LION ROAR 


45 





OMAR THE POINT-MAKER: Soccer star Omar Chamma. ALL-AMERICAN: Halfback Len Renery. 



LION RAMPANT: 
Lion soccer team in 
8-0 rout of Hofstra. 


POLISHED 

BOOTS 

The goal is an Ivy League title and 
a bid to play in the NCAA tournament. 
The assets are the nine returning 
starters, a defense which was scored 
upon only 19 times last year, and a 
tough new coach. The liabilities are 
untested goalkeepers and stiff opposi¬ 
tion from Pennsylvania, Brown, and 
Harvard —the nation's third-best col¬ 
lege team. 


Columbia's first All-American 
player, mid-fielder Len Renery, leads 
the offense. He is joined by John 
Bilikha, Mike Vorkas, Steve Low, Mas¬ 
simo Lupi and Omar Chamma, the 
team's most prolific scorer with 11 
goals. The defense is anchored by 
Rocco Commisso and Joe Koch. 
Sophomores Frank Feger and Anton 
Zauner provide reserve strength. 

But the key to the Lions' success 
will be in the goalmouth. If Ellis Gali- 
midi or Lew Preschel comes through 
in expected fashion, Columbia will be 
a national power. 


Joe Molder, who coached last 
year's squad to an 8-3-1 record, has 
left to take a position as assistant head¬ 
master at the Westover School. His re¬ 
placement, Jim Rein, an assistant here 
for the past three years, means busi¬ 
ness. "He said that he's going to throw 
people off the team if they miss prac¬ 
tice," remarked one player. "He can 
do that now because we have a deep 
team. There won't be any loafing on 
the field, either, because a guy knows 
that there is someone sitting on the 
bench good enough to take his place." 


46 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 














. . . and Larry Momo. 


HARRIERS: Sophs Mike Robinson .. . 


MAKING 

TRACKS 

As the cross-country season be¬ 
gan, the Lions had not won a meet 
in four years. But coach Irv Kintisch, 
in his first season at Columbia, pre¬ 
dicted that "we'll be better than last 
season." He was right. The Lions 
opened their campaign with a vic¬ 
tory over City College, a team put on 
the schedule for the express purpose 
of avoiding a winless year. 

But the rest of the season will be 
tough for Columbia because Harvard, 
Penn, and Cornell are on the schedule 
also and they are perennial powers. 
The Lions' most effective returning 
runner is senior captain Al Ugelow, 
who led the harriers in every race. 
His best effort last year was a fifth 
z against Rutgers. The other returning 

< letterman will be Dwayne Dahl. 

< Kintisch expects help from five 
^ sophomores, the best of whom is 
| Larry Momo. Jim Lonergan, Mike 
| Robinson, Alan Johnson and Larry 

Zarian will also bear watching. 


AN ERA ENDS: Mel Broander (left) 

and Al Schmitt (right) 

receive Lion awards upon retirement 

from the Athletic Office 

after serving a combined 

total of 105 years. 



TRANSITION 

Through two world wars, a de¬ 
pression, and a few police actions, Al 
Schmitt and Mel Broander manned 
the fourth floor of John Jay Hall, 
overseeing the Columbia athletic 
ticket and bookkeeping operations 
with equanimity, efficiency, and dis¬ 
patch. Last spring, after combined 
service of 105 years (Mr. Schmitt 
served 54 years and Mr. Broander 51), 
they retired. 

To show its gratitude, the Athletic 
Department made them honorary 
members of the Varsity 'C' Club and 
presented them each with a blazer 
and an inscribed statute of the Co¬ 
lumbia Lion. Dr. Cordier toasted 
them in a ceremony in his office and 
presented them with more practical 
tokens of appreciation—financial ones. 

However, retirement has not kept 
Mr. Schmitt away from Columbia. 
This September he was present at 
the Lions' home football opener 
with Lafayette, thus keeping alive 
his 53-year streak of never missing a 
Columbia home game. Q 


ROAR LION ROAR 


47 






©nC6 Qlf)on a ^fiwe, 

25 Qjeafts c^go, Columbia 1%yed a 53TootbaCC Qamc Against c P/tincefori. Columbia QAion. 

by Stephen 2inge/t '64 


Over the preceding century the Columbia football program has produced two truly wonderful moments- 
a Rose Bowl victory in 1934 and an upset of Army in 1947—one Ivy League co-champion, an impressive roster 
of uncommonly gifted quarterbacks and a number of unmitigated disasters. Most of these disasters have 
occurred at the hands of one particular rival institution. The name of this institution is Princeton. 

In 1889, Princeton defeated Columbia, 71-0. In 1890, Princeton defeated Columbia, 85-0. The Rose Bowl 
winners lost to Princeton. The 1961 Ivy League co-champions lost to Princeton after leading by two touch¬ 
downs. Alexander Hamilton (Columbia) lost to Aaron Burr (Princeton). That the 1947 team which upset Army 
did not lose to Princeton may probably be attributed to the fact that in 1947 Columbia did not play Princeton. 
Since 1874, when the two teams first met, Columbia's record against Princeton is 4-36. 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






Until 1952, the Princeton game 
was simply an unpleasant fact which 
Columbia was compelled to confront 
once every few seasons. Since then 
Columbia has played a football game 
with Princeton every year and the 
Lions have lost all of them. Since 1948 
Columbia has been 0-20 against 
Princeton. 

This situation has existed primar¬ 
ily because Princeton has had better 
football players than Columbia. But 
there have been a number of crucial 
situations in close games when the 
Lions would let time run out without 
stopping the clock, when the Lions 
had too many men on the field, when 
a Lion halfback hit the wrong hole, 
when a Lion tackle blocked the wrong 
man. What was once merely a battle 
against superior talent has evolved 
into an exercise in self-destruction. 
Princeton has become an affront to 
school pride, to alumni dignity, to 
James Wechsler's sense of justice. 

Columbia hates Princeton and 
Princeton, too busy hating Dartmouth 
and Yale, could not care less. For their 
home games with Rutgers and Cornell, 
Princeton charges six dollars per 
ticket. For the Harvard game, the price 
is seven dollars. You can see Columbia 
at Palmer Stadium for five. 

Year after year, Columbia parti¬ 
sans who do not normally attend foot¬ 
ball games descend upon Baker Field 
or Palmer Stadium in an indignant 
rage, fairly snarling for revenge. Year 
after year, they emerge — wall-eyed, 
slack-jawed: losers once more. Yet 
they keep coming back for more be¬ 
cause each new year could be THE 
year when the smog lifts, when lilies 
burst through the pavements, when 
the Tigers finally get theirs. 

But in 1945, when Arthur Schles- 
inger jr. was a young Turk and Susan 
Sontag was going to Walt Disney 
movies —and liking them — and the 
post-industrial society was but a flicker 
in the brain of Daniel Bell, Columbia 
really did beat Princeton. We cele¬ 
brate here, then, not only a centennial 
but the silver anniversary of that brief, 
shining, and unrepeated moment. 

On Thursday, November 15,1945, 
members of the Eastern Establishment 
sports press flocked to the Columbia 
Men's Faculty Club to be briefed by 
Lou Little and a representative of the 
Princeton coaching staff. Football 



COLD DUST TWINS: Lou Kusserow 
(left) and Gene Rossides (right) 
provided the most famous one-two 
punch in Columbia's history. 


ALL ALONE: John Nork lopes 
into the end zone unmolested 
for Columbia's third 
touchdown. 



ROAR LION ROAR 


49 



MASTERMIND: Coach Lou Little, 

who directed Columbia football for 27 years 

between 1930 and 1956. 

coaches view these briefings as an op¬ 
portunity to improve the gate and get 
free space in the newspapers on a non¬ 
game day. Football writers view these 
briefings as an opportunity to obtain 
an easy story and a free lunch. 

At some point between the ba¬ 
nanas and the coffee, an empty water 
glass was tapped with a fork and the 
writers snapped to attention. Lou Little 
arose and issued the following state¬ 
ment: 

"This is going to be an even foot¬ 
ball game. It will be no surprise if they 
win and it will be no surprise if Co¬ 
lumbia comes out on top. Some peo¬ 
ple have the idea that we overshadow 
Princeton. That's not true by a long 
shot." 

Here were two skills which all 
major college coaches must acquire: 
that of being a gentleman and that of, 
metaphorically speaking only, hedging 
one's bets. For if one fact was abun¬ 
dantly clear it was that Columbia in¬ 
deed overshadowed Princeton. As 
Saturday approached, Columbia had 
lost only one game and Princeton had 
won only one. Columbia was quicker, 
stronger, better drilled in every phase 
of the game. The Lions had the 
services of two of the most explosive 


backs in the country: a seventeen- 
year-old freshman named Lou Kus- 
serow and his eighteen-year-old class¬ 
mate, Gene Rossides. Sportswriters 
delighted in referring to them as the 
Touchdown Twins. (In later years, 
when the dollar would be pilloried 
by galloping inflation, sportswriters 
would delight in referring to them as 
the Gold Dust Twins.) The best that 
could be said for Princeton was that 
it had a lineman who was a grand¬ 
son of President Grover Cleveland. 

Still, there was nothing to be 
gained by lulling Columbia into an 
overconfident mood. Twelve years be¬ 
fore, a veteran Columbia team had 
been upset by a bunch of sophomores 
from Princeton and only the Rose 
Bowl win allowed the Lions to live it 
down. 

Then there were three other fac¬ 
tors Lou Little was considering. One 
was that his players were coming off 
their first defeat of the season (Penn 
had beaten them 32-7). Another was 
that the game was to be played at 
Palmer Stadium and the Lions had not 
won a game on the road since 1941 
when they had beaten, believe it or 
not, Princeton. Third, Princeton would 
be strengthened by the addition of 


freshmen admitted on November 1, 
and the acquisition of ringers just out 
of the service. All in all, it didn't 
amount to much but football writers' 
luncheons never have been existential 
exercises. 

"Yes sir," said Lou Little, "Prince¬ 
ton is a much better team than the one 
that beat Cornell. .. ." 

"We're a lot better," interrupted 
assistant coach Wes Felser, revealing 
the belligerency of the insecure. "And 
all four of our backs can throw 
passes." 

"Golly, not all at the same time," 
twitted Lou Little. 

"Seriously," said Felser, admitting 
the futility of trying to top someone 
with superior resources, "our team has 
changed considerably for the better. 
Many of those who were first-stringers 
against Cornell are substitutes now." 
The writers duly recorded it all and 
the bookmakers installed Columbia as 
13V2-point favorite. 

Slightly fewer than 20,000 showed 
up at Palmer Stadium that Saturday, 
less than half capacity but still the 
largest crowd of the season. Prince¬ 
ton, alas, has been a community of 
front-runners. 

On the first series of downs, Kus- 
serow quick-kicked half the field to 
the Princeton goal and the Tigers were 
immediately in trouble. They could 
not move at all and punted weakly out 
to their own 44-yard line. Then 
Kusserow took a handoff on a quick- 
opener off his own right tackle, 
watched the left side of the Princeton 
defensive line fold, and broke into the 
secondary. Two Princeton defenders 
were eliminated from his serious con¬ 
sideration by Columbia left end Elmer 
Ladyko, and Kusserow cut behind the 
block and loped into the end zone at 
4:54 of the first period. The quarter 
ended with Columbia leading, 6-0, 
and threatening to score again. 

Somehow, late in the first quarter, 
Princeton had been able to take the 
ball on its own 21 and drive to the 
Columbia four. But the Lions held and 
marched right back up field on the 
running of Kusserow and Rossides, a 
pass from quarterback Andy Caruso to 
Rossides and another from Rossides to 
end Les Thompson. On the third play 
of the second period, Rossides scored 
on a reverse from twelve yards out. 


50 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






The conversion was made and Co¬ 
lumbia led, 13-0. 

The next few minutes were un¬ 
eventful, with Columbia stopping 
Princeton between yawns but not 
moving the ball very well itself. So as 
a gesture of chastisement to his 
charges and a hint of courteous con¬ 
tempt for his opposition, Lou Little 
pulled his first string backfield out of 
the game. There were nearly 40 min¬ 
utes left to play and Columbia led 
by only two touchdowns, but the 
outcome had been settled. At 8:33, 
the second team culminated a 45-yard 
drive when Johnny Nork went one 
yard around his own left end. Colum¬ 
bia toyed with Princeton for the rest 
of the half and it ended with the Lions 
smugly ahead, 19-0. 

Little allowed the first team a brief 
airing at the start of the second half 
and the well-rested Kusserow justified 
the decision by intercepting a pass at 
the Columbia 46. On the next play, 
Rossides took a pitchout and began 
to sweep his right end. Then he pulled 
up and hit Kusserow with a pass at the 
Princeton 27, where Lou first finessed 
and then outran an unfortunate and 
lonely member of the Princeton sec¬ 
ondary. The ensuing kick made the 
score 26-0 and Coach Little gave his 
big kids the rest of the day off. 

In the final period, the third string 
fought its way into the Sunday edi¬ 
tions' agate type when quarterback 
Walt Kondratovitch scored on a sneak 
from a half a yard away. 

With 22 seconds remaining in the 
game, Princeton finally avoided a 
shutout. The only members of the 
Columbia team who witnessed that 
meaningless effort were those left on 
the playing field. Little had instructed 
all those not directly participating to 
retire to the showers and get good 
seats on the bus back to New York. 
Is there a coach today who could ex¬ 
hibit such disdain and still allow the 
opposition the solace of a touchdown 
before its own home crowd? 

On the same day that Columbia 
defeated Princeton, 32-7, the New 
York newspapers reported that 20,000 
people had gathered at a vacant lot on 
the Grand Concourse to watch nine- 
year-old Joseph Vitolo jr. pray before 
what he claimed was a vision of the 
Virgin Mary. The papers have reported 
nothing similar since. O 



FRONT RUNNER: Kusserow in action. 
Former Lion fullback is now an executive 
with NBC Sports. 


THE VICTORS: Line-up from the program. 


COLUMBIA 


LE LT LG C RG RT RE 

Ladyko Karas HoldnakSniadack Venutolo Greim Thompson 
87 74 33 53 62 78 17 

QB 

Caruso 16 

LHB RHB 

Rossides 21 Kondratovich 41 


FB 

Kusserow 22 


SQUAD LIST 


10 Olsen, b 

11 Bleasdale, b 

12 Lorden, b 
15 Byrnes, b 
20 Nork, b 
24 Moran, c 
30 Will, b 

35 Peters, b 

36 Hampton, t 
40 Borgess, b 
43 Pesature, b 
50 Blonder, c 


51 Heineck, c 

52 Thomas, c 

60 Cummins, g 

61 Risdon, g 

63 Schechter, g 

64 Krause, g 

65 Stanton, g 

67 Warnock, g 

68 Audley, t 

71 Scallan, t 

72 Miller, t 


75 Briggs, t 

76 Bowers, t 

77 Smith, t 

79 Kaleda, t 

80 Whipple, e 

81 Doherty, e 

82 Freda, e 

83 Lockwood, e 

84 Cohen, b 

85 Klender, e 

86 Bauerlein, e 


ROAR LION ROAR 


51 




DEAN OF CAPITOL HILL 

In 1922, Congressman Emmanuel Celler 
Fought For the League of Nations. 

Fifty Years Later, 

the Veteran Legislator From Brooklyn is Still Fighting. 


An elder statesman on Capital Hill can usually partake 
of the luxury of sitting back and directing, manipulating, 
and dispensing with business at a casual pace. But that is 
not the way Emmanuel Celler '10 does things. Celler, who 
has represented the 10th Congressional District in Brook¬ 
lyn for nearly half a century, has not broken stride once 
since he was elected back in 1922 on a platform support¬ 
ing the League of Nations and opposing prohibition. 

Celler has been in the forefront of many liberal 
causes over the years and now, at 82, is still kicking up 
dust on the Hill. Recently, the man who introduced the 
bill which made "The Star Spangled Banner" our national 
anthem (1931) has launched a campaign to abolish the 
Electoral College, has come out as a staunch opponent 
of the 26th Amendment (equal rights for women), and, 
as chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, 
is responsible for investigating impeachment proceedings 
against Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. 

In a recent interview, sandwiched between a com¬ 
mittee meeting and an appearance on the floor of the 
House, Rep. Celler spoke about the past and present in 
the capital. 

By his own estimate, more than 500 public laws 
bear his name. However, the ones of which he is proudest 
are the Immigration Law for Displaced Persons, the 
Celler-Kefauver Act—a 195&.anti-trust bill—and the 23rd, 
24th, and 25th amendments to the Constitution. He 
was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Acts 
of 1957, '60 and '64. The 1957 legislation was the first of 


its kind in 82 years, the other two were a school and voting 
rights bill and the Public Accommodations Act. 

These measures afford some insight into the man 
who for seven years has been "Dean of the House." 
Since Tie won his first election by a slim 3,111 votes he 
has been the adversary of monopolies and a champion of 
civil rights. His was one of the few voices to speak out 
against Sen. Joe McCarthy in the early 'fifties, and he 
shares in no small way the responsibility for making the 
Democrats the party of non-white minorities. 

Born in Brooklyn in 1888, Emmanuel Celler entered 
Columbia in 1906. The son of a whiskey and wine mer¬ 
chant, he worked his way through school by selling 
wine by the barrel. Two years after graduating from the 
College he received a degree from the Columbia Law 
School. 

In his autobiography, You Never Leave Brooklyn, 
Celler attributes his liberal leanings and concern for 
human rights to his childhood in Brooklyn, with its mix¬ 
ture of races and its 19th century ghettos. 

As a young man he involved himself in a venture 
which he says is always in the back of his mind when he 
launches one of his periodic crusades against the evils of 
"bigness" and "monopoly." He had helped to organize 
a neighborhood bank, but was eventually forced to sell 
out to one of the city's branch giants. The terms of the 
sale'were so "sharp" that Celler lost a considerable 
sum, which took years to repay. 


52 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



Although he was not a successful 
banker, he became a highly success¬ 
ful politician. As a junior congress¬ 
man, Celler judiciously adhered to 
the House maxim "Keep your ears 
open and your mouth shut." By the 
late 'thirties he had risen to prom¬ 
inence, and by the late 'forties he was 
chairman of the House Judiciary 
Committee. 

During the height of McCarthy- 
ism, Celler was one of the few visible 
adversaries of the Wisconsin senator. 
In one sortie,Celler called McCarthy's 
behavior "the shenanigans and the 
antics of a circus hippodrome." On 
another occasion he stated, "It is 
incredible—and I can find no other 
word for it —that the administration 
shall suffer itself to be humiliated by 
the raucous voice of one senator." 
Celler accused McCarthy of using his 
senate committee "to pervert the 
meaning of... patriotism, to silence 
criticism and to further his own brand 
of politics." 

During the same period, Celler 
and a handful of other Democrats 
began to push the party toward a 
more committed position on civil 
rights. After the defeat of an attempt 
to include an all-out civil rights plank 
in the 1952 presidential platform, a 
despondent Celler stated, "My guilt 
crawls inside me because I can never 
do enough for people whom society 
punishes for no reason but the color 
of their skin." 

Eventually Celler was to sponsor 
almost all the civil rights measures of 
the last fifteen years, and use his 
position as chairman of the House 
Judiciary Committee to defend others 
who worked for equality in the na¬ 
tion. 

When the Supreme Court came 
under fire in 1954, after its school 
desegregation decision, Celler came 
to the Court's defense, saying that it 
was "exhibiting more courage and 
understanding of the fundamental is¬ 
sues facing the country today than 
the other two coordinated branches 
of government." In 1957 he urged 
that federal troops be sent .to Little 
Rock to counter Gov. Orval Faubus' 
use of National Guardsmen. 

The headlines over the decade 
from 1955 to 1965 give one some 
idea of the ways in which Rep. 
Celler kept busy: "Celler Attacks Re- 



BIG STICK: Rep. Emmanuel Celler gavels to 
order the Special House Committee 
which held public hearings on the fitness of 
Adam Clayton Powell to serve in Congress, 
February 14, 1967. Powell declined 
to appear before the Committee, 
challenging its Constitutional right to 
inquire into his personal conduct. 


DEAN OF CAPITOL HILL 


53 








PORTRAIT OF THE CONGRESSMAN 
AS A YOUNG MAN: 

Rep. Celler in 1938. 



FAIR DEALING: Congressman Celler stands 
in back of President Harry S. Truman 
at signing of Displaced Persons Act, 1948. 


cent Moves of New York Banks to 
Expand;" "Celler Would Bar Morgan 
Bank Deal;" "G.E. Head is Target of 
Celler's Attack;" and "Celler Finds 
Taint of Monopoly in Some News¬ 
paper Mergers." 

' In 1964 the representative from 
Brooklyn became the longest-tenured 
member of the House — "The Dean 
of Congress." Looking back at his 
climb up "the Greased Pole" (a 
metaphor coined by Benjamin 
Disraeli and borrowed by Celler), 
he told a reporter, "I feel that though 
I am 76 years old I am on the thresh¬ 
old of my congressional career." 

Two years later, Celler was to 
embark upon one of the most pub¬ 
licized and, inside the capital, one of 
the most traumatic undertakings in 
recent congressional history. In De¬ 
cember of 1966 he proposed that 
Congress investigate the behavior of 
Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. Celler as¬ 
serted that Powell had "flouted the 
law," and had been a "bone in the 
throat of Congress." 

The following month Celler was 
selected to head the committee of 
five Democrats and four Republicans 
which would sit in judgment of 
Powell. Celler, a man of measured 
action, recommended in the com¬ 
mittee report that the Harlem con¬ 
gressman be censured and seated. 
However, on March 1st the House 
disregarded the committee report 
and voted not to seat him. In the 
furor which followed, Celler at¬ 
tempted, unsuccessfully, to negotiate 
a settlement which would seat 
Powell, and soon after the March 
1st vote declared, "If I were repre¬ 
senting Powell I would go to court 
right away. He's got a good case." 

Currently, the Brooklyn con¬ 
gressman is handling several new 
projects. In his campaign to abolish 
the electoral college he scored a 
victory on a direct election bill when 
the House voted it up 339-70-21 this 
past year. As chairman of the Judi¬ 
ciary Committee he lost a battle 
during the summer when the Wash¬ 
ington D.C. anti-crime bill was 
passed. 

The congressman scored the bill 
heavily, calling it a response to an 
"emotional appeal for law and or¬ 
der." He asserted that "a hysterical 
plea for law and order has prompted 



ON THE NEW FRONTIER: President John F. Kennedy 
signs into law the Anti-Crime legislation of 1969, 
introduced by Rep. Celler (far left). 


54 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 











IN THE GREAT SOCIETY: President Lyndon Johnson and 
Rep. Celler congratulate each other at signing 
of 1964 Civil Rights Act, which Celler authored. 


lawmakers to disregard the Constitu¬ 
tion," and charged that the preven¬ 
tive detention clause (which allows 
an individual to be jailed for up to 
60 days without a trial or writ of 
habeaus corpus) "erodes our con¬ 
stitutional prerogatives. Such laws 
might be all right in a fascist state," 
he added, "but not in a democratic 
state." 

"Pigeon-holing" is a notorious 
way of killing a proposed bill, by 
keeping it in committee. A little 
pigeon-holing done by Mr. Celler 
came to light recently and brought 
down on him the wrath of women's 
liberation forces. He had kept the 
proposed 26th Amendment in com¬ 
mittee for approximately 22 years, 
and when it was finally dragged to 
the floor of the House Celler voted 
against it. After the Amendment 
passed he made no bones about his 
views on women's liberation, stating 
that there is as much difference be¬ 
tween a man and a woman as there 
is "between a horse chestnut and a 
chestnut horse." 

The Brooklyn representative 
maintains that the new amendment 
will wipe out state laws which pro¬ 
tect women and has voiced the 
sentiment that "there can never be 
true equality between the sexes." 
Needless to say, this stand has made 
him a leading target of the move¬ 
ment. 

During almost a half-century in 
public life, Celler has seen many 
changes in Washington and on the 
Hill. Inside the House "the work 
load is greatly expanded, as the popu¬ 
lation increases," according to the 
congressman. "We used to have 
2,000 bills a session, but the num¬ 
ber is already up to 17,000 just 
through August. The membership 
of Congress has become younger," 
he says, and "intellectually, the cal¬ 
ibre has been enhanced." Celler sug¬ 
gests that this may "betoken an 
awakening interest of youth in our 
government. 

"But the general feeling in Con¬ 
gress today," Celler warns, "fs one of 
hostility to the youth of our col¬ 
leges. I do not agree with my col¬ 
leagues. They (students) have a 
gripe, a legitimate gripe, and they 
have shown their sentiments through 
serious-minded dissent. I don't con¬ 


done violence, but it is up to the 
officials of each school, not Con¬ 
gress, to prevent it. . . . If any of 
those campus order bills were to 
pass it would be horrible. But as of 
now I don't think there is wide¬ 
spread support of any one of those 
bills." 

The Congressman enjoys remin¬ 
iscing about the Presidents with 
whom he worked. He singles out 
Truman as his favorite, calling him 
"simple, direct and straightforward. 
He was a man of the people. He 
will rank high in history." Roosevelt, 
he believes, "was the greatest, I sup¬ 
pose. But he had his faults. He could 
be crafty and vindictive. I opposed 
his court-packing and he never for¬ 
gave me." Of Hoover he remarked: 
"He lacked the gift of phrase-making. 

I was there when he dug the first 
earth for the great new Commerce 
Department Building. ... He got a 
big spade full of earth and it had 
some worms in it. The only remark 
he could make on this historic mo¬ 
ment was: 'Earthworms are very 
good for agriculture.'" 


If there is one fault of which 
Celler himself cannot be accused it 
is "lacking the gift of phrase mak¬ 
ing." In the mid-'fifties he coined the 
term "Suezicide" to describe the ad¬ 
ministration's Mideast policy. On oc¬ 
casion his literary quotations have 
baffled reporters. Once the New 
York Times attributed a quote of his 
to a poem by William Ernest Henley. 
The next day Celler corrected the 
Times, explaining that Henley had 
lifted the line from Cervantes. 

On another occasion he told 
Attorney General Mitchell that the 
Nixon administration's voting rights 
bill resembled the "Apple of 
Sodom," described by Josephus, the 
Jewish historian of the biblical era. 
He explained: "Your bill gives the 
appearance of merit but when ex¬ 
amined, it is only smoke and ashes." 

Celler defines the successful Con¬ 
gressman as one who has "the friend¬ 
liness of a child, the enthusiasm of a 
teenager, the assurance of a college 
boy, the diplomacy of a wayward 
husband, the curiosity of a cat and 
the good humor of an idiot." Q 


DEAN OF CAPITOL HILL 


55 










Solicitors-Ceneral 

A flurry of last-minute contribu¬ 
tions boosted the intake of the 18th 
Annual Columbia College Fund to 
approximately $850,000 before the 
drive closed in mid-July. This was 
considerably more than the $700,000 
ceiling anticipated in June by pes¬ 
simistic Fund officials, though still 
substantially below the million dol¬ 
lar mark attained in previous years. 
"We didn't do anything special," a 
spokesman said. "The money just 
came pouring in." 

Late influx or not, the final figure 
is not only the smallest in nearly a 
decade, but also falls far short of 
meeting current needs. In 1969, the 
College was forced to turn down 35 
applications for financial aid from 
high school seniors whom it admitted 
to its incoming freshman class. This 
year, the number jumped to 43. 

Sponsors of the 19th Fund, which 
got underway in October, have in- 



FUND-RAISER: Victor Futter, Chair¬ 
man of Fund Board of Directors. 


stituted a series of new measures in 
an effort to reverse the downward 
spiral. For the first time, the annual 
kick-off was held on three separate 
evenings, instead of just one. The 
purpose, explained Victor Futter '39, 
chairman of the Fund's Board of Di¬ 
rectors, was to convey more effec¬ 
tively "the compelling financial 
necessities of the College," a task 
which can best be accomplished be¬ 
fore relatively small gatherings. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the meetings were con¬ 
ducted as workshops, in contrast to 
the festive banquets of the past. The 
opening session, on October 27, was 
for committeemen from the classes 
which graduated before 1940. Repre¬ 
sentatives from the remaining classes 
met on the following evening, while 
fund-raisers from the anniversary 
classes assembled the night of Novem¬ 
ber 4. 

The 19th Fund will also be the 
first to make extensive use of the 
services of undergraduates. Student 
volunteers will man telephones in a 


56 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






























































systematic effort to contact every 
alumnus in the United States. The 
students, however, will participate 
only in the first round of phone calls. 
Follow-up solicitations will remain 
the responsibility of the committee¬ 
men. 

In another departure from prece¬ 
dent, membership in the John Jay 
Society, traditionally reserved for 
donors of $250 or more, will be 
broken down into three separate 
categories: John Jay Associate (at 
least $250); John Jay Patron ($500); 
and John Jay Fellow ($1,000 or 
higher). In addition, younger alumni 
who contribute a minimum of $100 
will be designated class sponsors. 
The new title, it is hoped, will en¬ 
courage recent graduates to con¬ 
tribute more than token amounts. 
The Fund cannot survive on token 
gifts, officials remark grimly, any 
more than freshmen can subsist on 
token scholarships. 


Static-Seeker 

A composer of electronic music 
is a pretty "far-out" guy. Right? 
Wrong, says Charles Wuorinen '61, 
recipient of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize 
in music for his electronically-com¬ 
posed work Time's Encomium. 

"I am a very conventional per¬ 
son, with traditional views about 
what, makes music go," Wuorinen 
stated in a recent interview. Ac¬ 
cording to the 32-year-old composer, 
electronic equipment such as the 
Mark III Synthesizer at Columbia 
upon which he wrote his prize¬ 
winning selection is "just another 
medium of expression. The electronic 
medium does not carry with it any 
imperative as to what kind of music 
can be composed on it." 

Wuorinen, who is now an assist¬ 
ant professor of music at Columbia, 
said that while some composers work 
directly with electronic equipment 
and tape, he prefers to create a 
score on paper at home before re¬ 
cording in the studio. He pointed out 
that electronic music represents only 
one aspect of his career. Of the ap¬ 
proximately 90 pieces he has com¬ 
posed, only four have been elec¬ 
tronic. "The capacity to produce 


electronic music," Wuorinen says, "is 
just one required ability of any con¬ 
temporary composer." 

In addition to the Pulitzer, he 
has been showered with awards, 
honors, and commissions from such 
sources as the Ford, Koussevitsky and 
Fromm Music Foundations, the Na¬ 
tional Institute of Arts and Letters, 
and the Tanglewood Festival. 

The son of the late Dr. John 
Wuorinen, chairman of the history 
department at Columbia, Charles' 
undergraduate and graduate work 
here focused on music. In 1958, at 
the age of 20, he wrote his Sym¬ 
phony No. 3. Not long afterward, 
a critic wrote of him as an enfant 
terrible who "should be spanked for 
whacking the percussion with the 
petulance of any angry child with a 


THE MUSIC MAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning 
composer Charles Wuorinen. 

toy drum." 

He is extremely wary of making 
a big stir about electronic music, de¬ 
ploring "the fetish for the 'new' 
which has been going on since the 
turn of the century." He is also critical 
of some avant-garde movements in 
composing, which, he believes, are 
actually very shallow. 

Wuorinen spent a year compos¬ 
ing the score for Time's Encomium , 
which he terms "a major work" in 
his career. It was first performed at 
the Berkshire Festival in August of 
1969. 

The 700-tube Mark III Synthesizer, 
which the University has had for more 
than ten years, is one of the few in 
existence. Wuorinen explained that 
the machine was controlled by four 
sets of controls (each with sixteen 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


57 




switches) and a tape punch-key board. 
"It's a very arduous process . . . not too 
many people have mastered it," he 
remarked. The Pulitzer laureate is 
somewhat skeptical about the po¬ 
tential uses of electronic machinery. 
"Many people say that there are 
limitless possibilities with electronic 
equipment. There are no unlimited 
possibilities with anything man 
builds . . . each machine has its own 
limits and idiosyncrasies." 

Discussing public reaction to 
contemporary music forms, Wuorinen, 
who is also a pianist and conductor, 
detects a trend. "There are," he ob¬ 
serves, "a number of young people 
who need serious music, and when 
brought into contact with it will not 
have the prejudices of the 'middle 
brow' music listener of a previous 
generation. This is music that speaks 
to people because it is contemporary. 
The trouble with popular music is 
that it is short lived, it's nothing to 
grab onto." 

He began to notice this trend 
about five years ago, when attend¬ 
ance at the annual contemporary 
music series, held in McMillan 
Theater, began to rise. However, he 
warns, "that will pass if nothing is 
done. If people keep saying that it is 
all esoteric stuff, beyond most peo¬ 
ple's grasp, it will remain that way." 

In appraising the contemporary 
music scene, Wuorinen comments that 
"the major revolutions are over," and 
that it is now time to compile, 
assess, and "digest" what has hap¬ 
pened in the last three-quarters of a 
century. He predicts that the next 
major phase will be the "integration 
of western music and world music," 
due in large part to what he describes 
as "a confrontation with the high 
music cultures of the Far East. I don't 
think that the growth in interest 
among the young in Indian music was 
just happenstance," he said. 

Music, contends Wuorinen, can¬ 
not be divorced from other con¬ 
temporary trends — political, social, 
and technological — all of which 
have influenced it in various ways. 
For example, technological innova¬ 
tion opened the way to electronic 
music. What, Wuorinen speculates, 
would be the effect of a more open 
political and cultural relationship 
with Red China? 


The Jay 
Memorandum 

In a private dining room at a re¬ 
spectable mid-town club, four men 
conspired recently to seize the pri¬ 
vate papers of a prominent Ameri¬ 
can statesman. 

The statesman was John Jay, Class 
of 1764, and the papers in question, 
according to Gouverneur Morris Pro¬ 
fessor of History Richard B. Morris, 
"shed new light on virtually every as¬ 
pect of Jay's public career." Thanks 
to the generosity of the Class of 
1925, and some skilled detective work 
by an enterprising librarian, those 
papers now rest in the Columbia li¬ 
braries, where, according to Dr. 
Morris, they supplement the "rich 
and major collection" of John Jay 
materials already there. 

The saga commenced when 1925 
class officers, led by class president 
Julius P. Witmark, decided to donate 
an anniversary gift which, in Wit- 
mark's words, "would set an example 
for other classes." 

Another '25 alumnus, Morris 
Saffron, Chairman of the Friends of 
the Columbia Libraries, approached 
library officials for suggestions. Im¬ 
mediately Kenneth A. Lohf, Librarian 
for Rare Books and Manuscripts, con¬ 


tacted various dealers to ascertain 
what was available. Then the three 
men, joined by Assistant Director for 
Special Collections Charles W. Mixer, 
arranged a luncheon at the Columbia 
University Club, where Lohf reported 
his findings. 

"I came prepared with about a 
dozen suggestions," Lohf recalls, 
"ranging in price from about $1,000 
to $30,000. But as soon as I men¬ 
tioned the John Jay collection, they 
knew that was what they wanted"— 
even though, he adds, it was the most 
expensive item in the lot. The ma¬ 
terials include some 200 documents. 

Prof. Morris, who edits the John 
Jay papers and probably knows more 
about America's first Chief Justice 
than any man living, affirmed the 
wisdom of the selection. So did the 
New York Times, which reported the 
acquisition on its front page. ("First 
good story the Times has written about 
us in years," snorted one alumnus.) 
And no wonder. The papers include, 
for example, previously unpublished 
correspondence which establishes 
that Jay was an active revolutionary 
who procured cannon in Connecticut 
for the defense of the Hudson against 
the British in the summer of 1776. 
Previously, historians had known 
only that he had been named to a 
state committee to protect the river. 

Other papers reveal Jay's suc- 


UNMASKED: John Jay, whose secret dealings during 
the Revolutionary War were revealed in papers donated 
by the Class of '25. 



58 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








BOOKMAKERS: Editor Kandrac 
and Publishei Dent. 


cessful efforts while governor of New 
York to restore commerce between 
New York City and Philadelphia, dis¬ 
rupted by a yellow fever epidemic dur¬ 
ing the summer of 1795. When yellow 
fever hit New York in August, Pennsyl¬ 
vania's governor immediately pro¬ 
hibited all communication with the 
stricken city. Jay, fearing New York 
would suffer economic damage, ob¬ 
tained a medical report which mini¬ 
mized the contagiousness of the dis¬ 
ease, and within a month the ban was 
lifted. 

Columbia's John Jay collection, 
which now contains some 7,500 let¬ 
ters, documents, and manuscripts, 
plus another 15,000 family letters, is 
the largest single group of Jay papers 
in existence. 

Lion In Winter 

Where does a Barnard girl go to 
get her diary published? She might try 
Winter House, a new publishing con¬ 
cern launched by Laurence Dent '67 
and Richard Kandrac '68. 

Among the books on Winter 
House's first list is Members of the 
Class Will Keep Daily Journals , the 
diaries kept during the spring of 1968 
by two Barnard women, Tobi Sanders 
'69 and Joan Bennett '71. The two 
wrote their journals as a class assign¬ 
ment, and the facts and fantasies they 
recorded dealt more with themselves 
than with the events which havocked 
the campus that fateful spring semes¬ 
ter. 

Winter House seized upon the 
two documents mainly because of the 
contrast they display. Tobi Sanders, a 
well-to-do Jewish girl from Philadel¬ 
phia, filled her pages with classic pre- 
Aquarian Age worries about men, 
love, and coming of sexual age. Joan 
Bennett, a black girl from South Caro¬ 
lina, jotted haunting notes about racial 
identity and human loneliness. The 
two journals together are not great 
literature, are not of uniformly high 
quality, and are not unflaggingly in¬ 
teresting. Winter House decided 
nevertheless that these intensely per¬ 
sonal records of two young women in 
transition during the late 'sixties 
merited public attention. 

The new publishing house actively 
seeks books of distinction which 
might not get published elsewhere. 


It will take chances on experi¬ 
mental fiction which older, more up¬ 
tight houses consider too way-out, too 
rough-hewn, or too confusing. It 
has already published two books in 
this genre, Rangoon by Frederick Bart- 
helme and A Diary of Women by 
James Mechem. Winter House's best 
seller so far (over 1200 copies) is The 
Mugging by Barton Lidice Benes, a 
deliberately simplex picture book 
about an assault on the author and his 
friend in the New York streets. 

Winter House is primarily the 
heartchild of publisher Dent and his 
wife Sarah Smith '65B, who serves as 
managing editor. They have sunk 
$140,000 of their own money into the 
venture. Kandrac serves as editor and 
his wife, Sandra, is production man¬ 
ager. 

According to Kandrac, Winter 
House is not out to make a monetary 
killing, but it nevertheless must make 
more than random pennies to survive. 
Editor Kandrac fears that some of the 
firm's avant-garde idealism is already 
being sacrificed to commercialism. 

Major publishers often balance 
the blockbusters on their publishing 
lists with small literary oeuvres which 
they feel merit printing whether or not 
they turn a high profit. The big houses 
do not, however, rely entirely on cur¬ 
rent books to pay the rent. The strong¬ 


est firms are those with long backlists 
of perennial good sellers: Dr. Spock's 
Infant and Child Care or Hemingway 
novels. 

A cushiony backlist is what any 
new publishing house lacks. All the 
projects of Winter House are risky. 
However, one way in which a novice 
firm can compete is by reprinting 
old books on which the copyright has 
expired or never existed. (No author to 
pay.) Naturally, there is a scramble to 
put out the most attractive editions of 
such books — like the Bible or the col¬ 
lected plays of Aeschylus. Winter 
House thus far has eschewed the 
gospel and Greek classic game and in¬ 
stead plunked its financial hopes on 
reissuing a facsimile of the 1883 edi¬ 
tion of The Universal Self Instructor — 
a comprehensive how-to book which 
celebrates polite and pragmatic Victo- 
rian-era life in America. 

The Literary Guild has already 
contracted for 7500 copies of the Self 
Instructor which will sell at $18.50 
apiece before December 31. Richard 
Kandrac believes this to be the first 
time the prestigious Guild has offered 
a selection from a publisher's first list. 
If Winter House can keep up the mo¬ 
mentum, some of Columbia's legend¬ 
ary publishing scions may feel the 
pressure. Up against the wall, Bennett 
Cerf! Q 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


59 





@dh§ j^Mataassa 

FUND-RAISERS HAD THEIR HEADACHES IN THE 18™ CENTURY, TOO. 

by Frank L. Ellsworth 

Frank L. Ellsworth, a Ph.D. candidate in American Literature at Columbia , 
served until June as the Law School's Assistant Director of Development, and 
is now Director of Special Projects at Sarah Lawrence. 

The details are familiar. Bedeviled by political dissension, conflicts with the community, improvident 
realty investments and faulty fund-raising mechanisms, a small liberal arts college in New York City struggles 
to survive. But though the problems may seem contemporary, the setting is not, for the institution is King's 
College, the 18th century colonial forebear of Columbia University. 

King's College was born of monies from a public lottery. Lotteries by subscription were a common means 
of financing projects designed for the general welfare, and helped to launch the College of New Jersey 
(Princeton), the Academy of Philadelphia (the University of Pennsylvania), and other colonial schools. In 
general the lotteries were supported by the middle classes. Tickets usually cost thirty shillings, and anywhere 
from five to 13,000 tickets were sold for each drawing. Benjamin Franklin even created a system whereby 
it was possible to pay in installments. Some colleges used their trustees as lottery managers, while students, 
faculty, alumni and other trustees peddled chances. The colleges usually grossed between 12 to 15 per cent, 
but they also had to absorb the unsold tickets, and this could be costly: in 1764 the College of New Jersey lost 
£343. The lottery craze diminished with the depression of 1764-68, when tickets became hard to sell. Simul¬ 
taneously, people began to question the morality of the lotteries, and the schools found it increasingly difficult 
to obtain legislative consent for them. 

60 COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


COLUMBIANA 


















































But in the 1740s, the lottery was 
still popular. The first of several lot¬ 
teries for a college in New York was 
approved in December, 1746, by the 
General Assembly of New York "... in 
as much as it will greatly Tend to the 
Welfare & Reputation of the colony 
that a Proper Ample Foundation be 
Laid for the Regular Education of 
Youth; & as so good and Laudable a 
design must readily excite the Inhabit¬ 
ants of this Colony to become adven¬ 
turers in a Lottery." Inspectors were 
appointed by the Common Council to 
ensure fair play, and the Post Boy an¬ 
nounced the results of the weekly 
drawings. Forgery of tickets was pun¬ 
ishable by death "without benefit of 
clergy." Joseph Murray, who would 
later become a governor of the Col¬ 
lege and its earliest major private 
benefactor, won the first prize of £500. 

Even after enough money had 
been raised to cover building and op¬ 
erating expenses, there remained the 
problem of finding a suitable location. 
Ever since the turn of the century, the 
Church of England had promised to 
donate to Trinity Church a parcel of 
land called the Queen's Farm, as a site 
for the first college in the colony. But 
the pledge had never materialized, 
and the proceeds of lotteries held in 
1746, 1748, and 1751 were vested in 
trustees while the search for a site 
continued. It wasn't until 1755, a year 
after King George II officially sanc¬ 
tioned the incorporation of the 
school, that the Trinity Church land at 
last became available. 

As soon as it did, a new problem 
arose. Anglican officials in England 
had imposed numerous restrictions 
upon any educational institution built 
on the property. These, though 
tempered somewhat after lengthy dis¬ 
cussions among New York civic 
leaders, ranking clergymen, and foun¬ 
ders of the College, still required that: 

The President of the Col¬ 
lege shall forever for the time 
being be a Member of and in 
communion with the Church 
of England as by law estab¬ 
lished and that the Morning 
and Evening Services in the 
said College be the Liturgy of 
the said Church, or such a 
collection of Prayers out of 
the said liturgy with a Collect 
peculiar for the said College 


as shall be agreed upon and 
approved by the President 
and Governors. 


The restrictions, coupled with the 
appointment of Anglicans to two- 
thirds of the Governors' positions, 
triggered a bitter controversy over 
whether an essentially ecclesiastical 
institution should be supported by 
public funds from the lotteries. At¬ 
tempts were made to transfer the 
lottery endowment to a "New York 
College," and a Long Island Dutch- 
reformed clergyman articulated the 
fears of his co-religionists one Sunday 
when he declaimed: 


Was there not a Sum of 
Money raised by our Assem¬ 
bly, in order to erect a Col¬ 
lege or Seminary of Learning 
for the Education of Youth? 
. . . Should a popish King, 
whose Subjects were partly 
Papists, partly Protestants, 
take a Revolution to make 
Popery prevail, what better 
could he do, than appoint 
popish Presidents and Tutors 
in the Seminaries of Learning? 


One result of the public outcry 
was that the royal charter, issued by 
King George II on October 31, 1754, 
was not approved by the New York 
legislature until the following May. 
Officials hoped to bargain in the 
meantime for further relaxation of the 
restrictions governing the use of the 


land, to permit the appointment of a 
Professor of Divinity from the Re¬ 
formed Protestant Dutch Church —a 
move calculated to win favor among 
the large and influential Dutch com¬ 
munity in the colony. 

Three Yale men led the opposi¬ 
tion to the fledgling institution: 
William Livingston, John Morin Scott, 
and William Smith jr. Airing their 
opinions regularly and loudly in The 
Independent Reflector, The Watch 
Tower, and The New York Mercury, 
all three advocated the incorporation 
of a "free college" instead. Livingston 
at length abandoned his opposition 
after some of the more odious restric¬ 
tions had been removed, but insisted, 
lawyer-like, upon attaching a state¬ 
ment of protest to the body of the 
Charter itself. In the statement, Living¬ 
ston prophesized correctly that the re¬ 
maining restrictions would be "greatly 
obstructive to charitable contributions 
by those to whom the College of 
Trinity Church will be disagreeable 
who are a vast majority of the Province 
and who would cheerfully contribute 
to the College of New York and the 
advancement of literature." 

Finally, in December of 1756, the 
committees for the College and New 
York City agreed upon the dispositions 
of the bonds and mortgages in which 
the lottery funds were invested. The 
College received £3,202 and the rest 
was given to the city for "a proper 
Pest-House for the reception of such 



COLUMBIA'S BEST INVESTMENT: Hosack's Cardens, site of 
Rockefeller Center, contained a famous botanical garden early 
in the 19th century. 


KING'S COLLEGE GOES A-BEGGING 


61 












Persons as may be infected with any 
contagious Distempers and for the 
erecting of a new publick Gaol." The 
legislature also pledged an annual sub¬ 
sidy of £500. Thus, without assistance 
from private sources, and faced with 
the deep resentment of many New 
Yorkers, King's College embarked 
upon its first decade, sustained only 
by a curious blend of church and gov¬ 
ernment support. 

Samuel Johnson, the first Presi¬ 
dent of King's College, and the Gover¬ 
nors were quick to recognize the fi¬ 
nancial problems confronting the 
young institution. At the third meeting 
of the Governors, the Ways and Means 
Committee drafted letters to accom¬ 
pany subscription requests which 
were delivered in person by William 
Johnson and George Harison to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, the Bishop of London 
and the First Lord Commissioner of 
Trade and Plantations. Subscription 
lists were also transmitted to all the 
islands of the West Indies. 

The appeals letters were almost 
identical, with the wording altered 
only slightly to suit the prospective 
donor. The content was quite straight¬ 
forward: "But being sensible that we 
shall not be able to bring this great and 
good Design to any considerable de¬ 
gree of Perfection, without the Chari¬ 
table Assistance of such gentlemen, in 


the neighboring Governments, and 
elsewhere, that shall approve of our 
Constitution, we have made bold to 
beg your favour and Interest, in for¬ 
warding a Subscription among the 
Gentlemen of your Island." 

The complete results of these 
early subscriptions are not known be¬ 
cause of the paucity of records. The 
Matricula, the official College record 
of that era, notes that "Sundry gentle¬ 
men at Oxford gave books, whose 
names are in them." Oxford, which 
always maintained close ties with the 
young school, was to give more books 
in 1763 and a copy of every publica¬ 
tion of the Oxford University Press 
several years later. In addition, the 
Society occasionally contributed 
money. 

In general, however, support 
was difficult to obtain, and Johnson 
pressed unremittingly for more gifts 
from the mother country. In 1760 he 
thanked the Archbishop of Canterbury 
for his assistance: "The Governors 
acknowledge your Graces kind Pa¬ 
tronage of our Infant Seminary, and 
particularly the good influence there 
of the venerable Society for the Propa¬ 
gation of the Gospel in procuring us so 
noble and generous a Benefactor." But 
at the same time, he wrote to the So¬ 
ciety, lamenting the College's sorry 
financial state: "I am sorry to find so 
little hopes of a collection for my Col¬ 
lege, which is much needed. But I do 


hope Providence will provide, that 
either by Brief or Subscription, a Col¬ 
lection may yet be made; without our 
Building (now finished) has cost so 
much (£8, or £10,000) that I do not see 
how we shall have stock enough to 
provide sufficient salaries." 

Soon afterward the Committee on 
Ways and Means dispatched addi¬ 
tional letters to the Universities of Ox¬ 
ford and Cambridge, the Royal So¬ 
ciety, the Antiquary Society, and the 
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, 
Manufactures, and Commerce. After 
dipping into capital funds in 1761, the 
Governors decided to intensify their 
English solicitations, and commis¬ 
sioned James Jay, brother of the Chief 
Justice, to act in their behalf. Assisted 
by London merchants and by Dr. 
William Smith, Provost of the College 
of Philadelphia, who had come to Eng¬ 
land on a similar mission, and armed 
with a Royal Brief which bore the per¬ 
sonal endorsement of Archbishop 
Seeker of Canterbury, Jay was able to 
return with £6,000 in hand. 

Shortly after the Jay visit, the Rev. 
Duncombe Bristowe bequeathed to 
the College his library of 1,500 vol¬ 
umes of "valuable, well-chosen, use¬ 
ful books," through the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel. A Dr. Mor¬ 
ton contributed a curious collection 
of ancient alphabets on copper plates 
and Dr. James Tucker willed a collec¬ 
tion of insects. 


TORY! TORY! TORY! Myles Cooper, British sympathizer and 
second President of King's College, had to flee from his 
students just before the Revolution. 




ABOVE IT ALL: William Samuel Johnson, 
President of Columbia from 1787 until 1800, 
displayed little interest in fund-raising. 


62 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


COLUMBIANA 





The Governors also sponsored 
several missions to St. Christopher's, 
Antigua, and Barbados. A Rev. Mr. 
Cook was paid £500 and expenses to 
raise money in the West Indies, but 
there is no record of how he fared. 
Col. John Maunsell, who was paid 
£100 to campaign in Ireland, ap¬ 
parently returned with only a £50 con¬ 
tribution from a bishop to show for 
his pains. 

Myles Cooper, the second Presi¬ 
dent of King's College, also looked to 
England for funds, the more so be¬ 
cause his loyalist political leanings 
made him increasingly disliked by his 
fellow New-Yorkers. Cooper's ambi¬ 
tions encompassed a variety of proj¬ 
ects: one purpose of his English visit 
in 1771 was to enlist support for a 
plan to educate and Christianize the 
American Indian. He did not neglect 
the College, however, trading upon 
his popularity among many English¬ 
men to obtain remission of the quit- 
rents on the Trinity Church property, 
and acquire additional gifts of books, 
including Dr. Hill's gift of Vege¬ 
table System. Another windfall from 
England, though not directly attribu¬ 
table to Cooper's visit, was a fund 
created by Oxford's Society of Gentle¬ 
men, for the distribution of medals 
and books in all areas of study at 
King's College. 

In a state of affairs address upon 
his return to the colony, Cooper 


hailed the efforts of English benefac¬ 
tors, and in particular the Anglican 
Church: "Since the passing of the 
charter, the Institution has received 
great emolument by grants from his 
most gracious majesty King George 
the Third, and by liberal contributions 
from many of the nobility and gentry 
in the parent country; from the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, and from several public 
spirited gentlemen in America and 
elsewhere." 

The last part of the statement, it 
may be surmised, was more wish than 
reality. Columbia, unlike other Ameri¬ 
can colleges, never received substan¬ 
tial financial support in the colonies. 
Although the early Governors did con¬ 
tribute from their own pockets to the 
struggling corporation, subscription 
campaigns in New York City were gen¬ 
erally unsuccessful. With the excep¬ 
tion of a bequest by Joseph Murray, a 
College Governor, who in 1757 left 
the school his personal library and 
property valued at approximately 
£9,000, private gifts were small and 
few in number. George Harison gave 
the Governors the engraving of the 
Seal of King's College, valued at ten 
guineas. Lawrence Kilbourn, the artist, 
donated Dr. Johnson's portrait, and 
Garrat Noel, proprietor of the official 
College bookstore, contributed the 
four volumes of Caladio's Hebrew 
Concordance. In 1756, another Gover¬ 


nor, Paul Richard, remembered the 
College in his will with a modest be¬ 
quest. It is interesting to note that in 
preparing the will Richard had trouble 
recalling the name of the institution 
which he served. 

A subscription list dated 1760 
bears the names of some distinguished 
New York families, although docu¬ 
ments setting forth the amounts of 
their donations have been lost: Auchi- 
nuty, Beekman, Barclay, Courtland, 
Livingston, Rutgers, Ver Planck and 
Macy. Attempts were made in 1755 to 
woo New York's new Governor, Sir 
Charles Hardy, who asked to see the 
subscription list and then gave £500. 
At about the same time, the Ways and 
Means Committee designated an of¬ 
ficial "to collect money from People 
generously disposed to promote so 
Laudable an Undertaking" and further 
recommended "that Every member of 
this corporation write to his own Cor¬ 
respondent and also engage whatever 
friends he can influence." 

Just prior to the Revolution, the 
College received a small bequest from 
James Alexander who, toward the end 
of his life, had also donated his entire 
salary as a representative of the Gen¬ 
eral Assembly. After extensive efforts 
by President Cooper, including nu¬ 
merous visits and letters, Edward Antill 
left his estate of £1,241, philosophiz¬ 
ing: "What greater pleasure can fill 
the human breast than the considera- 


BENEFACTOR: Sir Charles Hardy , 
Colonial Governor of New York, gave 
the College £500 in 1755. 


LEGISLATOR: lames Alexander, who 
donated to King's College his salary as a member 
of the Colonial General Assembly. 



KING'S COLLEGE GOES A-BEGGING 


63 


COLUMBIANA 





tion of having furnished our country 
with good devines, able Physitians, 
honest and skillful lawyers, and up¬ 
right and faithful merchants?" But the 
financial crisis worsened, and by the 
winter of 1766 the school was re¬ 
ported to be in great neglect, having 
"sunk about £200, exclusive of £170 
outstanding debts" 

In 1774, King's College held its 
last public commencement. Shortly 
afterward, President Cooper, the Tory, 
was chased out via the back door and 
returned in haste to England. His 
liquors were sold for £150 following 
his precipitous exit, and his library for 
only £5, as his opponents gleefully ex¬ 
posed in Gentleman's Magazine. 
When war came, the College was 
turned into a hospital and the library 
and other apparatus were stored in 
the City Hall. 

The corporation was barely kept 
alive during the war by sporadic 
Governors' meetings and, apparently, 
some intermittent instruction. With 
the class of 1776, King's College 
ceased to function, and it wasn't 
until 1784 that it was revived as 
Columbia University in the City of 
New York. 

The last sixteen years of the cen¬ 
tury were taken up in a constant 
struggle to survive. Of all the colonial 
colleges, King's College had had 
the closest ties to the mother coun¬ 
try, and suffered, therefore, the great¬ 
est losses due to the war. Without 
funds, without president or faculty, 
with the flight of wealthy Anglicans 
to England, and with its once-hand- 


"IN LUMINE Official Seal of 

King's College, drawn by William Johnson, 
the first President. 



some building barely standing, the 
school's very life was at stake. In 
1784, the remaining Governors peti¬ 
tioned the State Legislature for a 
change of charter which would trans¬ 
form the College into a university. 
For three years after that, Columbia 
was a state institution, operating un¬ 
der the authority of the Regents of 
the University of the State of New 
York. Due to political squabbling and 
shortage of funds, the appointment of 
a new president was delayed. 

Again Columbia turned to the 
Old World for support, sending Col. 
Matthew Clarkson to France and the 
Netherlands to raise money and to 
seek the advice of Benjamin Franklin, 
Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. 
The trustees wrote to all three states¬ 
men, alerting them to Clarkson's im¬ 
pending visit, and entrusted addi¬ 
tional letters to Clarkson himself. 
But Clarkson, through ineptitude or 
neglect, never delivered the letters 
or saw the men at all. Moreover, 
Franklin replied from Paris that Co¬ 
lumbia was the fourth American in¬ 
stitution to seek help, and that the 
prospects were bleak; and Adams 
warned that the gifts would not cover 
Clarkson's expenses. Clarkson was 
finally summoned home with nothing 
to show for his efforts, and he agreed 
to reduce his fee. 

The times were lean. Numerous 
reports by the trustees refer to the 
collapse of several bonds which had 
once looked promising. Only one 
gift appears on record: £1,000, from 
Major Edward Clarke, to pay for 
books. Newspaper advertisements 
called upon all debtors to pay their 
arrears. In desperation, the College 
applied to the Legislature for a new 
grant-in-aid, to be raised by a tax on 
marriage licenses. The Legislature re¬ 
sponded by giving £2,552 to cover 
losses incurred during the Revolu¬ 
tion. 

In 1787, the original charter was 
revived, and Columbia became a 
private corporation once again. But 
under its third President, William 
Johnson — son of Samuel Johnson — it 
continued to look principally to the 
public coffers, as Johnson displayed 
none of his father's talents for pri¬ 
vate fund-raising. In spite of the Rev¬ 
olution, English benefactors provided 
another source of revenue during 


those years. However, the paucity of 
private gifts from American donors 
left Columbia's finances shaky. "With¬ 
out therefore the money received 
from England and the aid from the 
Legislature," wrote Johnson in 1790, 
"it would have been impossible to 
repair the College and to pay the 
salaries at this time. But this money 
is expended and the Trustees have to 
rely in the future solely on the col¬ 
lections of their own revenue." A 
partial solution, Johnson suggested, 
was for each student to provide one 
load of hickory wood each year for 
the lecture rooms. 

Fortunately for the students, the 
legislature came to the rescue once 
again. When, in 1792, the Trustees 
pleaded, "Your petitioners beg leave 
humbly to represent that the Funds 
of the College have been impaired 
by the Events of the late war," the 
law-makers granted £7,000 for the 
library, chemical apparatus, and 
buildings, and also agreed to pay 
£750 each year for salaries. This 
annual subsidy, originally limited in 
duration to five years, was later ex¬ 
tended to seven. 

Although the legislative bounty 
afforded a momentary breathing 
space, the College was less fortunate 
in its realty ventures. Royal grants of 
land in New Hampshire and upstate 
New York, the gifts of the crown or 
of colonial governors, were cancelled 
in the wake of the Revolution. Al¬ 
though Columbia could have been 
compensated for the seizure of at 
least some of these properties, there 
is no evidence that the Trustees filed 
claims. Other real estate investments 
at Lake George, Ticonderoga, Crown 
Point and Governor's Island, all in 
New York State, languished, and 
were sold for a pittance during the 
following century. 

At the close of the century, Co¬ 
lumbia was in desperate straits. The 
legislative well had run dry: when 
the Trustees returned in 1796 to beg 
for more money, the law-makers 
voted a paltry $500 for the Anatomi¬ 
cal Museum, and suspended further 
support. The only bright spot was the 
opening of negotiations which would 
culminate, years later, in the gift of 
a rural tract known as Hosack's 
Gardens Today the property is called 
Rockefeller Center. o 


64 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




Alumni Authors 


Pocahontas and Her World by Philip L. Barbour '18 
is a fascinating look at the relationship between 
the Powhatan Indians and the early English settlers 
of Jamestown. Pocahontas, daughter of the Powha¬ 
tan chief, served both symbolically and literally as 
an assuager of the culture clash between the two 
nations. The picture of the Colonists versus Indians 
is not always pretty, but Pocahontas, though 
partially stripped of romantic embellishment in 
this study, remains charming and enigmatic. 
(Houghton Mifflin, $5.95) 

Tens Days of Infamy by Malcom Decker '18 is a 
slim volume recreating in scholarly but readable 
style the most notorious conspiracy against the 
stars and stripes. The conspirators, Benedict Arnold 
and John Andre, were both cloak and dagger anti¬ 
revolutionaries, albeit for different reasons. Arnold, 
an American General, was moved by pique and 
profit to commit treason. Andre, a British Major, 
acted loyally for the wrong (losing) side. This hour- 
by-hour account of their unsuccessful plot is illus¬ 
trated with photographs of the historical places as¬ 
sociated with the intrigue. (Arno Press, $12.50) 

The Citizen Genet Affair by Harold Cecil Vaughan 
'18 focuses on the debate in 1793 over America's 
relationship to the French Revolution and con¬ 
sequent European war. The debate culminated in 
Washington's policy of "disentanglement." Ages 
10 up. (Franklin Watts) 

Matilda by Paul Callico '21 is a rollicking novel 
full of scruffy characters and outlandish situations. 
The loveable if smelly hero, Matilda, is a boxing 
he-kangaroo who wins the hearts of Mafia buffoons 
and luscious ladies as he punches his way to a 
middleweight championship. (Coward-McCann, 
$5.95) 




Little by Louis Zukofsky '23 is a playful and gently 
satiric novel about a child prodigy violinst and the 
eccentrically anxious and sometimes brillant world 
of his family and music teachers. (Grossman, $5.95) 


Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader edited 
by Lionel Trilling '25 is a cultural milestone con¬ 
taining 50 selections of critical writings ranging 
from the judgments of Plato to Sontag. In a lengthy 
introduction, Trilling interprets the intentions and 
processes of criticism and assesses the critic's func¬ 
tion of making literature more immediate and 
pleasurable. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, $9.95) 


The People of Concord by lames Playsted Wood 
'27 is a book to be read before any family trip to 
Massachusetts and the Freedom Trail. Mr. Wood 
attempts to show young readers the significance 
and richness of Concord by glimpsing into the lives 
of the great people who lived there: people like 
Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Sanborn and Louisa 
May Alcott, who took nurture from Concord's 
liberty and literary traditions, and gave back even 
greater glory. Ages 10 up. (Seabury, $4.95) 






The Career of Philosophy by John Herman Randall 
jr. '28 perceives an essential continuity between 
medieval and modern philosophy. Volume 1, From 
the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, shows how 
the heirs to the three great medieval philosophies 
of knowledge embraced Renaissance humanistic' 
values and tried to assimilate 17th century science. 
Volume 2, From the Enlightenment to the Age of 
Darwin, explores how 18th century thinkers at¬ 
tempted to formulate a scientific intellectual meth¬ 
od that could be carried into all areas of man's 
life. Scholars will eagerly await the third volume 
which will deal with the one hundred years since 
Darwin. (Columbia University Press paperbacks: 
Vol. 1, $4.25; Vol. 2, $3.45) 

Fields of Peace by Millen Brand '29 with photo¬ 
graphs by George Tice is a Pennsylvania German 
album exploring the lifeways and beliefs of the 
Amish and Mennonite peoples. The narrative is 
admiring, gentle, and sometimes lyrical, and both 
text and pictures are clear-toned and informative. 
(Doubleday, $8.95) 

One Man Alone: Richard Nixon by Ralph de Tole- 
dano '38 is a reverent biography of the President 
of the United States written by a journalist who 
has been his trusted friend and associate for over 
20 years. (Funk & Wagnalls, $6.95) 

Population, Migration, and Urbanization in Africa 

by William A. Hance '38 surveys and analyzes 
thoroughly the population factor in Africa's various 
societies and economies. This study shows the 
close and complex relationship between demog¬ 
raphy and the social and political development of 
regions, nations, and the entire continent. (Co¬ 
lumbia University Press, $15.00) 

The Kite That Won the Revolution by Isaac Asimov 
'39 is based on the premise that Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin's international eminence as a scientist enabled 
him to enlist France as an ally of the Colonies, thus 
securing America's victory at Yorktown. Actually, 
this premise is just an excuse to allow Asimov to 
explore in a lively and easily understandable way 
the experiments and thinking which led to the 
discovery of electricity and Franklin's lightning 
rod. Lots of other incidental historic and scientific 
information is also passed on. Ages 11 up. (Hough¬ 
ton Mifflin, $3.00) 

The Anatomy of a Television Commercial: The 
Story of Eastman Kodak's "Yesterdays" edited and 
introduced by Lincoln Diamant '43 is a detailed 
history of the award winning two-minute com¬ 
mercial which took fifteen months and 10,000 man 
hours to produce. (Hastings House, $12.50) 

The Venus Atmosphere edited by Robert Jastrow 
'44 and S. I. Rasool is a selection of scientific re¬ 
ports first presented at the Second Arizona Con¬ 
ference on Planetary Atmospheres. The informa¬ 
tion is comprehensive and technical. (Gordon and 
Breach, Professional price: $24.50; prepaid: $19.60) 

Minorities and the American City: A Sociological 
Primer for Education by Francesco Cordasco '44 
and David Alloway provides a short historical 
study of urbanization and minority problems and 
indicates broad avenues of solutions to current 
dilemmas. The methodology of argument (charts, 
role-playing examples, etc.) is sometimes complex. 
(David McKay paperback, $1.95) 


65 


ALUMNI AUTHORS 




The New York Mets by Leonard Koppetl '44 is a 
complete history of the team from its franchise in 
1960 through its basement years, culminating in the 
amazing Mets' 1969 pennant and world series 
victories. Complete with all manner of statistics, 
this book is for the real fans. (Macmillan, $9.95) 


Developing Nations: Quest for A Model edited by 
George Oakley Totten '44 and Willard A. Beling 
contains 11 essays by leading scholars on develop¬ 
mental problems, including one by Totten and one 
by Carl Eric Carlson '43, dealing with the utiliza¬ 
tion of American, Soviet, and other models by 
developing nations. (Van Nostrand Reinhold, $3.95) 


Black Suicide by Herbert Hendin '45 probes the 
reasons behind the startlingly high suicide rate of 
young urban Blacks. Case histories of 25 persons 
who attempted suicide paint a picture of neglect, 
rejection, violence, self-hatred and despair: a 
landscape of human anguish inextricably related 
to the black experience in America. (Basic Books, 
$5.95) 


American Civilization in the First Machine Age, 
1890-1940, by Gilman M. Ostrander '46 contends 
that there has been a fundamental change in the 
American character as a result of technological 
advance and a century of immigration. Youth has 
emerged as a ruling class largely because it must 
be depended upon to acquire the new skills neces¬ 
sary to growing technology. (Harper & Row) 

The New Book of Motorcycles by Eric Arctander 
'49 is a comprehensive guide to American and 
British bikes, European motorcycle tours, and types 
of competitive meets. This is a handbook for en¬ 
thusiasts. (Arco, $3.50) 


Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard '51 is a 
series of poetic monologues written as if by promi¬ 
nent figures of the Victorian era, delicate in wit 
and delightful to read. (Atheneum, $3.95). Alone 
With America is Howard's critical study of 41 other 
contemporary poets. Each poet is considered as an 
individual rather than as a limb of a certain 
"school,” and Howard's response to each artist is 
equally personal. His analyses seem to seek the 
heart-spirit of each poet's imagination. (Atheneum, 
$12.95) 


Shaw and the Doctors by Roger Boxhill '53 ex¬ 
amines George Bernard Shaw's views on doctors 
and medicine in the light about what we now 
know about the practice of medicine in Shaw's 
day. Using careful documentation, Boxhill argues 
convincingly that the Shavian viewpoint on medi¬ 
cine cannot be dismissed as bizarre prejudice. 
(Basic Books, $5.95) 


The New Zoning: Legal, Administrative and Eco¬ 
nomic Concepts and Techniques edited by Norman 
Marcus '53 and Marilyn W. Groves includes six 
essays by legal authorities discussing zoning regula¬ 
tions and the ways in which land regulation de¬ 
vices can be used to achieve specific development 
goals in the public interest. (Praeger, $15.00) 


The Grand Street Collector by Joseph Arleo '54 
moves from the pre-war streets of Little Italy to a 
poverty-stricken Sicilian village as it tells of an un¬ 
willingly committed political assassination and its 
sad consequences for the humble assassin and his 
son. (Walker and Company, $5.95) 


Opening Nights: Theater Criticism of the Sixties 

by Martin Gottfried '55 is a stunning and lively 
collection of play reviews and think-pieces on the 
nature of contemporary drama. Mr. Gottfried is 
concerned with both Broadway and far off Broad¬ 
way, with overrated "hits" and underrated "flops," 
and with what is fine in traditional drama as well 
as what the new wave of theater is bringing. Gott¬ 
fried, a critic who celebrates theatrical adventure 
and new dimensions, has looked ahead into the 
'seventies and stands ready to applaud future 
fruits of innovation. (G. P. Putnam, $6.95) 



The Heresy of Self-Love: A Study of Subversive 
Individualism by Paul Zweig '56 explores, in a 
most original and stimulating collection of essays, 
the persistent admiration Western Civilization has 
had for passional and intellectual narcissism. Using 
cultural touchstones ranging from Gnosticism to 
Courtly Love to Kierkegaard to Freud, Zweig shows 
how egotism thinly disguised as self-discovery is 
rooted in Western tradition as a counterbalance to 
the claims of community, state, and proclaimed 
public values. (Harper Colophon, $2.25) 

A Union of Individuals: The Formation of the 
American Newspaper Guild by Daniel J. Leab '57 
is the story of how and why white collar editorial 
workers, who prided themselves on their inde¬ 
pendence, joined together to form a union. This 
scholarly study is a welcome addition both to the 
histories of journalism and organized labor. (Co¬ 
lumbia University Press, $10.00) 

Assignment: Sports by Robert Lipsyte '57 is a de¬ 
lightful collection of human interest anecdotes 
from the wide world of sports. Lipsyte provides 
unfamiliar views of some of the greats: Rogers 
Hornsby, Muhammad AM, and Casey Stengel; and 
glimpses into the lives of some unknowns: a 
Norwegian fishing guide, a California eating cham¬ 
pion, and a one-time minor league baseball player. 
For young and not so young adults. (Harper & Row, 
$3.95) 

Arthur Miller: Portrait of a Playwright by Benjamin 
Nelson '57 uses biography as a backdrop for the 
comprehensive study of the writings of one of 
America's foremost living dramatists. (David 
McKay, $5.95) 

Parentheses: An Autobiographical Journey by Jay 

Neugeboren '59 bridges the "generation gap" be¬ 
tween the apathetic consciousness of the 1950s and 
the impassioned activism of the 1960s. The book is 
the unsentimental odyssey of a Brooklyn boy who, 
having embraced the "whole man" concept of 
Columbia, naively slides into a General Motors 
executive training position. There, first-hand ex¬ 
perience of the stultifying effects of the "system" 
leads him to drop out of his secure future and 
drop into the uncertain world of civil rights action 
and revolutionary hope. (E. P. Dutton, $5.95) 

Laurence Stern as a Satirist: A Reading of Tristram 
Shandy by Melvyn New '59 reinterprets Sterne's 
work as a part of the Augustan moral tradition and 
argues that Tristram Shandy can be best under¬ 
stood as a satire exposing the fallacy of belief in 
human self-sufficiency. (University of Florida Press, 
$7.50) 

Non-White Immigration and the "White Australia" 
Policy by Herbert I. London '60 reports on Aus¬ 
tralia's changing immigration policies toward non- 
Caucasians as the nation reassesses her image and 
position among Asian states. (New York University 
Press, $6.95) 

Rebels Against War: The American Peace Move¬ 
ment, 1941-1960, by Lawrence S. Wittner '62 
chronicles the decline of popular support for 
pacifism during the World War II and cold war 
years, and its comeback in the late 'fifties, largely 
attributable to "ban the bomb" sentiments. This 
study provides interesting background material for 
the understanding of the current antiwar fervor. 
(Columbia University Press paperback, $2.95) 

An Anthology of New York Poets edited by Ron 
Padgett '64 and David Shapiro '68 presents the ex¬ 
citing verses of 27 New York-based contemporary 
bards. More than geography, an intipiacy of spirit 
is what connects these fine poets to one another. 
Works by the editors are included in this volume, 
as are poems by Dick Gallup '68, John Ashbery, 
Aram Sarovan, and Kenneth Koch. (Random House, 
Cloth: $12.50; Vintage Edition, Paperback: $3.95) 

Talkin' About Us edited by Bill Wertheim '65 con¬ 
tains poetry and short prose pieces written by teen¬ 
agers in the Upward Bound program. With much 
passion and little guile the authors present slices 
of their lives: an afternoon in the East Bronx, 
Thanksgiving on a rural farm, a night in Harlem. 
A few of the poems are very fine indeed. (New 
Century distributed by Hawthorn Books, $3.50) 


66 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





Obituaries 


George R. Beach '95, President and Chairman of 
the board of the Providence Institution for Sav¬ 
ings of Jersey City from 1941 to 1957. He was 
president of the Aiumni Federation from 1923 to 
1926, and was elected alumni trustee in 1925. He 
received the Columbia Alumni medal in 1920, 
the Gold King's Crown in 1934, the Columbia 
Trustees medal of excellence in 1942 and the 
Bronze Lion award in 1966. Died June 4, 1970. 


James N. Rosenberg '95, lawyer, painter, writer and 
philanthropist. He worked with Hoover in 1921 
on the American Relief Administration and in 
1947 headed a U.S. committee for the passage of 
the Genocide Convention at the U.N. At the age 
of 62 he made art a full-time career, and more 
than 25 American museums, including the Smith¬ 
sonian Institute, display his works. Died July 21, 
1970. 


Waldo Sellow '13, Advertising Manager and Vice 
President of Harpers Magazine, and recipient of 
the Alumni Federation Medal in 1944. Died May 
2,1970. 


Richard M. Pott '17, the architect who designed the 
new Senate office building. He was a partner in 
the firm of the Eggers Partnership and a John Jay 
Associate. Died Sept. 16,1970. 


Kenneth Thompson '20, lawyer specializing in air 
and admiralty law and member of the law firm 
of Mendes and Mount. He authored Discussions 
of Air Law and The Mental Side of Coif. Died 
May 14, 1970. 

Abraham D. Feingold '22, co-founder of the Rugby 
School, one of the first institutions for mentally 
retarded and handicapped children in New York 
City. In 1950 he lost his job as a mathematics 
teacher in a city high school when he refused to 
state whether or not he had ever been a mem¬ 
ber of the Communist party. The New York State 
law under which he was dismissed was declared 
unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 
1967. Died September 14,1970. 

Franklin J. Leerburger '24, consulting engineer 
who was an adviser to the United Nations de¬ 
velopment program. He was a consultant on 
projects in Brazil, the Philippines, and Vietnam. 
Died May 11,1970. 

Milton M. Bergerman '25, Chairman of the Citizens 
Union of New York for more than twenty years. 
He led several compaigns to improve govern¬ 
ment in New York City and was often an out¬ 
spoken critic of the city administration. He also 
served on several state and citywide legislative 
and judicial committees. He was the recipient of 
"The Distinguished Classmate Award" upon his 
graduation. Died Sept. 8,1970. 


Edmund H. H. Caddy '26, Dean of the New York 
Law School from 1939 to 1941 and from 1947 to 
1949. During the 'forties he served as assistant 
attorney general of New York State in charge of 
the New York City office. Died June 21,1970. 


Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie '27, professor of English at 
Columbia, was co-editor of the six volume 
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. He had been a full 
professor at Columbia for the last 19 years. Died 
March 23,1970. 


Irving H. Dufine '31, President of DuFine and Co. 
Inc., a New York advertising agency which he 
founded in 1941. He received the Dean's Award 
in 1957 and the Alumni Medal in 1958, and was a 
member of the John Jay Associates. He was also 
chairman of the Alumni Interfraternity Council. 
Died July 7,1970. 


George Syvertsen '53, CBS news correspondent, 
killed while in Cambodia. He had been in and 
out of Vietnam since November of 1967 and had 
covered most of the major battles of the war, in¬ 
cluding the Tet offensive and Khe Sanh. Before 
going to CBS he had been a foreign correspond¬ 
ent for the Associated Press in Warsaw and Mos¬ 
cow. Died June 1970. 




James N. Rosenberg 

Richard M. 

Pott 


Milton M. 

Bergerman 

1891 

Eliot White 

1913 Frederic David Zeman 

1918 

John P. Papp 

1932 

Joe Lambert 

January 1967 

March 26,1970 

1920 

Francis Story Myers 

1933 

James G. Clapp 


1905 

Henry C. Haas 

1914 Ernest B. Slade 




March 27,1970 


March 26,1970 

March 11,1970 

1921 

Ira Murray Silbersweig 


Sidney M. Kaplan 


Ralph Hustace Hubbard 

Ralph Kitchel Smith 


October 3, 1969 

1934 


March 1970 

Benjamin Mark Kaye 

November 25,1969 

1922 

Wilfrid L. Blanchet 

1937 

David Ira Sinizer 

March 1968 


March 25, 1970 

1915 Harold Elmer Anthony 


Rafael Cantini 



Alfred Ernest Rejall 

March 2,1970 

March 29,1970 


1968 


James Raymond Walsh 

1906 

Ambrose H. Burroughs 


William J. Shultz 


1965 


Percy L. Roberts 

May 4,1970 

November 10, 1966 


May 23,1970 

1941 

Edward J. May 

1908 

Lester Clark Danielson 

June 5,1970 

1923 

William Emil Gleim 

1970 


John J. Young 

Joseph M. Fallon 

1924 

Adolph D. Folger 

1943 

Arthur Kohlenberg 

July 1970 

1909 

Herbert S. Schoonmaker 

February 22, 1970 


March 1970 



March 7,1970 

Lazarus Marcus 


Herbert Francis July 

1948 

Jack L. Kroner 


Ernest C. Thompson 

May 30,1970 

February 9, 1970 


April 9,1970 


April 15,1970 


1916 Henry W. Bischoff 

July 5,1969 

1928 

Murray L. Dunning 

1962 

Bernard J. Arenberg 

1910 

DeWitt V. Weed, Jr. 

April 22,1970 


1968 


March 24,1970 


Patrick F. Canavan 

1930 

Edward Jeremiah May 

1969 

Raymond S. Gomkoto 

1911 

Ernest Harvey Van Fossan 

May 27,1970 

1917 Duncan Albert Dobie 

February 27,1970 


March 21, 1970 


1912 

Alfred H. Sturtevant 

Herbert August Schulte 

1931 

Eugene L. Roussin 


David McCarthy 

April 5, 1970 

May 11,1970 


May 3,1970 


1969 


67 








SIGNS OF THE TIMES: 

Protesters throng the Financial District 
in May, 1970. 


UNFRIENDLY PERSUASION: 
Police arrest a demonstrator at a 
political rally. 


68 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


STEVE KAYFETZ 




A Journalist Returns After Two Years in the Far East 
and Finds a Vastly Changed America. 


By Arnold Abrams '61 

Returning home after a two-year 
stay in Southeast Asia was like visit¬ 
ing Vietnam for the first time. Having 
read and heard and thought so much 
about the place, I was intellectually 
prepared for what I saw. Seeing it, 
however, was something else. 

I was struck initially by surface 
differences between America and the 
Far East. It felt strange to see so many 
white people in the streets, and I 
was aware, as never before, of their 
physical size. Most of all, however, 

I found myself goggling at their ap¬ 
pearance. This reaction, strictly gut, 
was synthesized in a memorable 
moment on the evening of my third 
day back. 

It came at the corner of 3rd and 
50th, waiting for the light to change 
and watching a small segment of mid- 
Manhattan humanity surge past the 
windshield. The conglomeration of 
long hair, wide and bizarre ties, in¬ 
credibly striped pants, micro-minis 
and maxis all moving together was 
mind-blowing. "My God," I said to 
my wife, "it looks like everyone's gone 
crazy." 

Although I still found myself 
staring after several weeks, the pass¬ 
age of time left me feeling that the 
face of American society is the least 
of its ills. Far more unsettling was the 
sense of deep division, of crumbling 
institutions, inadequate services, and 
widespread discontent. It was as if 
I had wandered into a sick ward on 
the way home, and found everyone 
I know in it. 

I left a divided society in the fall' 
of 1968, but the lines seem to have 
been drawn even more sharply since 
then. I never saw so many flag de¬ 
cals; never sensed such a gap be¬ 
tween youths and their elders; never 
imagined headgear worn by con¬ 
struction workers could come to 
signify so much. 

The weekly news magazines, on 


Arnold Abrams '61, former Spectator managing editor and News- 
day reporter, studied Chinese as a Journalism Fellow at Columbia's 
East Asian Institute. He has been based in Hong Kong since Septem¬ 
ber, 1968. His dispatches appear regularly in the Far Eastern Economic 
Review and The New Leader, and are carried in numerous domestic 
newspapers. He wrote this article for CCT after a home visit last 
summer. 



PARTISAN EMBLEM? The American flag 
has been used to symbolize support 
for the Administration. 


EVERYONE'S GONE CRAZY 


69 




SILENT MAJORITY: "/ never 

imagined headgear worn by construction workers 

could come to symbolize so much." 


which most Americans 12,000 miles 
from home must rely, report the 
domestic situation but fail to convey 
its deeper meaning. Friends' first¬ 
hand accounts of the hardhats' Wall 
Street attack did, however, as did 
their reports of radicals' actions in 
campus confrontation. Both chilled 
me with a glimpse of the blind hatred 
and violent potential I had come to 
associate with patrols in Vietnam, not 
political demonstrations or college 
meetings in America. 

Similarly, seeing the full texts of 
Agnew's addresses illuminated the 
division in the States more starkly 
than any compressed, paraphrased 
accounts published abroad. So did a 
mediocre movie like The Strawberry 
Statement , a typically slick and hol¬ 
low Hollywood effort based on the 
1968 confrontation at Columbia. 


I saw the movie on a Saturday 
night in a Long Island suburb, hardly 
a hotbed of student radicalism. The 
theater was packed, however, with 
high-scho.ol and college-age youths 
whose reaction to the film — which 
concluded with a long, brutal depic¬ 
tion of a police bust — was explosive. 
They roared with outrage and shook 
their fists through the last scene, 
while shouts of “kill the fuckin' 
pigs" sounded in the aisles. Some of 
them were crying. 

I had not seen a movie audience 
react so strongly since Randolph 
Scott led last-minute cavalry charges 
at Saturday matinees in Brooklyn. 
This was, it seems, a measure of how 
much Chicago and Kent State have 
cost the country. If I had gone to 
the same film in the Midwest — or 
even at some theaters in Queens — 


there probably would have been 
more adults in the audience, and they 
would have been cheering through 
that final scene. 

I found the hardened lines cut¬ 
ting into my friendships as well. 
Sounding me out about the situation 
in Indochina, some acquaintances 
grew annoyed when my accounts 
did not jibe with their preconcep¬ 
tions. My attempts to explain the 
military factors justifying the Cam¬ 
bodian incursion, or the reasons for 
My Lai led to questions about whose 
side I'm on. I replied that I'm against 
anyone who refuses to recognize 
complexities in the mess over there. 

Not that I hadn't returned with 
the same tendency to oversimplify 
domestic issues. The Silent Majority's 
emergence as Nixon's prime con¬ 
stituency was particularly disconcert- 


70 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




THIN BLUE LINE: 


New York police on duty at 
Wall Street demonstration. 


ing from afar. I went to the movie 
Joe, for example, prepared to 
laugh at and vent contempt for the 
central character, a larger-than-life 
hardhat representative. 

Laugh I did, for the dialogue and 
actor Peter Boyle's portrayal of the 
pathetic Joe are priceless. But the 
film's climax — a symbolic, murder¬ 
ous confrontation between Middle 
America and Rebel Youth — left me 
immensely sad, not hating. I saw too 
many things explaining the other 
side, too little hope for narrowing 
the gap between two worlds. 

Contact with the Third World— 
the Radical Left — offered even less 
hope. It came in a lengthy reunion 
with a college friend, also a former 
Spectator editor, who is now a dedi¬ 
cated revolutionary. He implicitly 
branded me "establishment” because 


I do not fully support his cause. I 
found this ironic in light of what some 
high military officials in Vietnam have 
said about me, and in view of various 
dispatches I have filed from Laos, 
Thailand, Cambodia and Taiwan 
about American involvement in 
Southeast Asia. 

Yet there it was, and here was my 
friend talking about fomenting rev¬ 
olution in America, through violent 
means if necessary. "Would you 
plant a bomb?" I asked him. "I'd 
rather not answer that," he replied. 

A curtain then fell between us. I 
felt there was no way to impart my 
conviction that, while so much of 
what he seeks for the country is 
necessary, violence and bloodshed 
will create conditions far worse than 
those now existing. He said, in re¬ 
sponse to another question, that he 


had never seen anybody killed. On 
reflection, I think it was a foolish 
question. It is terrible to see someone 
die a violent death, but I doubt that 
anything would have changed if he 
had. 

Touching base with campus mod¬ 
erates was, not surprisingly, more 
heartening. I came away from an even¬ 
ing session in a Morningside Heights 
apartment admiring the cool intel¬ 
ligence and caustic concern of six Co¬ 
lumbia undergraduates I had met. 
Among them were several student 
leader types, an English major and a 
pre-med: not a fully representative 
cross-section, but a significant sam¬ 
pling. They were bright and well- 
informed, yet seemed for the most 
part so directionless. 

They reject their society and 
speak, in effect, of dropping out —of 


EVERYONE'S GONE CRAZY 


71 







NEW POLITICS: Traditionally 
non-political, many police have become 
as openly partisan as anyone else. 


doing their own thing and milking 
some private, post-graduate utopia 
for whatever happiness it will yield. 
But they do not know where that 
utopia lies or what it holds. They know 
only what they do not want and where 
they will not go. 

How markedly their tone differs 
from the tempo of my time at Co¬ 
lumbia. In my senior year, Eisenhower, 
after lulling everyone to sleep, finally 
grinned his way out of the White 
House. Kennedy came in like a breath 
of fresh air, his New Frontier kindling 
the campus the way oxygen revives a 
drowning man. 

We packed the dorms' television 
rooms to watch JFK deliver his inau¬ 
gural address. And when it ended, we 
were sufficiently stirred by the elo¬ 
quence and vigor behind the vision to 
give the President heartfelt, standing 


ovations. Then we floated out to 
gather and exchange exclamations in 
Van Am Quad, and it is hard to 
imagine now how much hope hung in 
the air on that cold, clean January day 
in 1961. 

The outside world was screwed 
up, to be sure, but at that heady time 
a good many of us actually believed 
that something could be done about 
it, and that we would have a hand in 
the healing process. There were the 
Peace Corps, a 10-year plan for Latin 
America, growing sympathy for the 
civil rights movement and hopes for 
improving relations with the Soviet 
Union. Nobody had heard yet about 
Vietnam. 

But that is ancient history, the 
kind of stuff James Shenton may soon 
start to use in evoking a sense of the 
past at his traditional — in my time, at 


least — year-end lecture on American 
history. Instead of wearing £ racoon 
coat, playing Bessie Smith records, and 
reciting speeches by Woodrow Wil¬ 
son and Gen. Patton, he'll appear in 
tweeds and crewcut, play back Ken¬ 
nedy's inaugural address and read 
aloud some Spectator editorials pro¬ 
duced by my managing board. 

I fully felt the 10-year age gap be¬ 
tween us when the undergraduates 
asked me, at the end of our evening 
session together, what I thought of 
them. 

I leveled as best I could. I thought 
them admirable but found them sad¬ 
dening. The latter Judgment, I now 
believe, reflected my own disappoint¬ 
ment. These kids represent our finest 
hope at this time, yet they too are 
stumbling blind, with no answers. O 


72 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


STEVE KAYFETZ 







Letters 


Correction 

On Page 68 of Columbia College Today, 
Summer 1970 issue, you have a picture 
entitled "DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: This 
hurdler's world seems to have turned 
upside-down." Just for the record, that 
hurdler is me and I am a high jumper and 
not a hurdler. I admit that the picture 
could be taken for any number of things. 

Jim Gorman '71 

Dissent on McGill 

I wish to register a protest against the 
selection of William J. McGill as incoming 
President of Columbia University. At a 
recent alumni gathering in his honor in 
San Francisco a brawl broke out during the 
course of his speech on campus turbu¬ 
lence. An older alumnus began slugging 
one younger, Mr. McGill's speech was 
constantly heckled by younger alumni, 
the speech was stopped only to be re¬ 
sumed, a microphone was ripped from 
its wire, and harried wives chased after 
their cardiac prone spouses as genera¬ 
tions of alumni fought each other. Is a 
man who can inspire such division in 
this age of deep societal cleavage a 
good choice for Columbia's future? 

Using his public relations arsenal of hand¬ 
shaking and vaguely liberal rhetoric, Mr. 
McGill made it clear that after all the 
protests it would still be the Establishment 
who would dominate Columbia and 
indeed society. His speech was cleverly 
written and embarrassingly ill delivered so 
that, while he sounded as if he were 
reading another's prose for the first time, it 
was difficult to object to well covered 
statements, the assumptions behind which 
meant continued preservation of existing 
power structures. 

If Mr. McGill thought he was going to a 
fund-raising affair for the wealthier and 
older alumni—as was obvious from the 
conservative tone of his lightly liberal 
speech—he ought to realize that the 
younger alumni will have none of the 
vacuous rhetoric of yesteryear. 

William Sywack '62 


'Whole Man' Upheld 

Let me tell you how disturbed I was by 
your most recent issue describing the 
plight of the CC course. I can tell you that 
CC gave me (Class of 1953) a method and 
a frame of reference for problem solving 
that I still use. 

The suggestion that Columbia's "whole 
man" goal was an elitist notion, no longer 
relevant to current attitudes is fantastic 
nonsense. The increasing fragmentation of 
our society demonstrates, if anything, the 
need for generalists and "whole men." 

CC with its relativistic assumptions would 
seem the perfect course to provide a 
balance and perspective against which to 
evaluate exclusive group power visions 
which threaten to rend our connective 
social fabric. 

The course is valuable today precisely 
because it is unfashionable and challenges 
the prevalent conformities. It would be 
ironic if, after surviving frontal assaults 
on its freedom to teach unpopular ideas in 
the '50 s, Columbia were now to surrender 
this tradition to current student and 
budgetary attitudes. 

Norman Marcus '53 


Against the Gym 

I have just read the May 20 plea to 
College alumni on behalf of the Varsity 
"C" Club and am still trying to decide if 
the concern for trivia is satirical or merely 
simpleminded. The chaos in the universi¬ 
ties and to a certain degree the chaos in 
the nation is a partial legacy of educational 
institutions which traditionally have shown 
more solicitude for athletic supporters 
than for the quality of teaching and the 
climate of inquiry on their campuses. I and 
most of those who attended Columbia 
College with me worthy of my respect, 
cared not in the slightest about Columbia's 
gymnasium and intercollegiate athletic 
program. That was in the mid-1950s. 
Recent events on the campus make it clear 
that students today give even less of a 
damn about gyms than do I. As far as I am 
concerned, the gymnasium has no 
priority and the funds designated for it 
should have been raised instead for 
improving faculty salaries, awarding 
scholarships to needy students, strength¬ 
ening the library and improving relations 
with the abused Morningside Heights 
community. Were it not so pitiable, the 
preoccupation with the gymnasium would 
be laughable. 

Walter J. Green '58 


Banding Together 

The allegations of Albert Bergeret ("Nix on 
Extracurrix," Summer 1970) concerning 
the role of the conductor in the personnel 
problems of the Band are as shocking as 
the audacity of the editors of CCT in 
publishing them. Bergeret's sole responsi¬ 
bility on the Managing Board was with 
the marching band, with which the 
conductor is not directly involved, and so 
he can hardly be quoted as an authority on 
the problems facing the concert band. On 
the other hand, as the chief officers of the 
Band during the last four years, we can 
attest to the warm relationship between 
David Josephson and the members of the 
Band during his tenure as conductor. 
Further, the stature which the concert 
band gained among musicians at Columbia 
during these years was, to a large extent, 
the result of his direction. 

The problems of the Band, like those of 
other activities, are intimately connected 
with the changing attitudes and priorities 
of Columbia College students. No serious 
discussion of these trends in student life 
should include the irresponsible com¬ 
ments which you published. 

Peter Janovsky '68 
Head Manager, 1967 
Richard Heyman '69 
Head Manager, 1968 
Richard Goodman '70 
Head Manager, 1969 
Martin Farber '71 
Head Manager, 1970 


Hail ... 

Your Summer 1970 issue was the best 
written, most informative, and most objec¬ 
tive publication I have ever received 
from Columbia. 

Charles B. Temkin '69 


... and Farewell 

Kindly remove my name from your mailing 
list, and send me no more copies. The 
latest issue, received in August, is to me 
just nauseating. So send me no more! 

Warner Pyne '12 


73 








~ ..Columbia 
College 

Today 

Room 336 • 632 West 125th Street 
New York, New York 10027 


Address Correction Requested 


Non-Profit Organization 
U.S. Postage 

PAID 

New York, N.Y. 
PERMIT NO. 3593 


1 


Mr. Christopher J. McCurdy 
505 Fayerweather 



GUESTS OF HONOR: President William J. McGill (right) and his predecessor , President 
Emeritus Andrew Cordier, share a joke at a recent party. 







~ ..Columbia 
College 

icxJay 


WINTER-SPRING 1971 





45 

10 


baths , 

(T'tel/,. 


Nile 


£ fuich 1 /' 

JlrfditUfwrf */* 


t/tik 

it 


ROOM AT HE BOTTOM: 
THE CRISIS IN JOBS 





















TO BE RETURNED IMMEDIATELY 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE 

Application for Financial Aid 


Name of applicants 


SMITH 


Home address _ 


(PLEASE PRINT) Last 

711 NORTH FIFTH STREET 


JOHN 


B. 


030-32-2554 


Soc. Sec. No. 


Number and Street 


MIDDLETOWN NEBRASKA 


City or Town 


County 


SchooL. 


THEODORE ROOSEVELT H.S„ 


MIDDLETOWN 


R. JACOBSON 


City 


H-—___ . Home Phone Number _ 

Principal 

If you are requesting financial aid from Columbia College, fill out t] 
Application for Admission, to the OFFICE OF COLLEGE A. “ 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 10027, 
January 1. In addition,your parents or guardian must file the Parent: 
with the COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP SERVICE, BOX 176%BftINCE' 
parents live in, or west of, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missou: 


statement to the COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP SERVI 
they live in, or west of, Montana, Wyoming, Colo: 
COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP SERVICE, BO}%10~" 
Parent’s Confidential Statement may be obti 
College Scholarship Service office. ^ mJftf i 
How much money can you coi 


form 1»dwiailm;, along with the 
SICMS, M^HAMILTON HALL, 
tl^^jgfpossible and no later than 
Confidential Statement of resources 
NEW JERSEY 08540. If your 
Oklahoma, or Texas, they should send the 



1, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS 60201; or if 
lexico, they should send the statement to 
ECEY, CALIFORNIA 94701. The form for the 
our own secondary school or from the nearest 
r o later than January 1. 
ipFnses during your first year in college? 

Tom your family $_ 650 _ 


Relatives and friends 


none: 


One fifth of personal savings 

Summer work 

Social Security benefits as a 
college student under twenty-two 

Veteran Administration benefits 
Other sources _ 




500 


NONE 


-NONE 


-NONE 


TOTAL $ 


-1225- 


Your freshman year at Columbia College, as a resident student, will cost you approximately $4,450, plus 
your travel expenses. Using this information, what is your financial need as you see it? $ 3225 _ 


DON'T LET IT HAPPEN 


19th Annual Columbia College Fund 




























The gravest threat to education today comes not from rioting 
students but from the state of the national economy. Inflation 
and recession have combined to raise operating costs while 
diminishing the flow of government grants and alumni contribu¬ 
tions. In the resulting squeeze, something has got to give, and at 
Columbia two worthwhile enterprises have given already: the 
theater division of the School of the Arts, and the Forum. 

President McGill and his associates are striving resolutely, 
and at times ruthlessly, to trim expenses. They have no choice: 
the only alternative to reducing the University's educational out¬ 
put is to let the entire institution go under. Theirs is an unenvi¬ 
able task, because Columbia will be poorer no matter what they 
do. What is saved in dollars must be taken out of programs. 

The alumni cannot rescue the school singlehandedly, any¬ 
more than the President can. But the President is doing his best, 
and so must we. 

The economic crisis has also constricted the job opportuni¬ 
ties available to college graduates. The consequences could 
affect us all. The schools and cities are filled even now with angry 
young radicals. Their numbers may soon be augmented by stu¬ 
dents vyho are presently accommodated to "the system," but are 
frustrated in their attempts to find worthwhile employment. 
America survived the bread lines of the 'thirties. One won¬ 
ders, though, what would have happened if the Great Depression 
had gripped a country whose youth was already as alienated as 
ours is. 


The plight of Spectator deserves the attention of every alum¬ 
nus, and indeed of every citizen. The newspaper is threatened 
with loss of its tax exemption for having endorsed candidates for 
elective office, in defiance of a regulation which prohibits tax- 
exempt corporations from engaging in political activity. 

What makes the move especially ominous is that it follows 
warnings issued by several government officials in the wake of 
widespread campus disturbances last Spring. These officials an¬ 
nounced that they would invoke sections of the Internal Revenue 
Code, hitherto unused, to keep universities in line. 

Their commitment to law and order would be more con¬ 
vincing if it were more even-handed. One wishes, for example, 
that federal officers at Kent State and Jackson State had pro¬ 
ceeded with half the zeal which the I.R.S. is exhibiting in its 
dealings with Spectator. And there are loopholes in the tax laws 
themselves which seem to cry out for far more urgent attention 
than the one ambiguous provision on which the I.R.S. relies in 
its dispute with the newspaper. 

The selective use of laws to silence political enemies is not 
law-enforcement, but its antithesis. There is no surer way than 
this to destroy respect for law among the young. What are they 
to think of the established order, when its representatives appear 
to wink at homicide while cracking down on impecunious tax 
offenders? Students have rejected the double standard in sex, 
and will not tolerate it in the administration of justice. 

As an undergraduate, I took a four-year major in Spectator, 
and in consequence attended relatively few classes. But James 
Shenton's lectures were not to be missed. One reason, of course, 
was that Shenton is an unusually gifted speaker. Another was that 
he has a remarkable memory for faces. A classmate of mine once 
signed up for his History 10 section, came to his first class, and 
didn't show up again until the last day of the year. It was the day 
of the Roaring '20s lecture, which everyone in the College at¬ 
tended, whether or not he was registered in the course. To my 
friend's acute embarrassment, Shenton greeted him by name and 
asked him where he'd been. James Shenton not only notices stu¬ 
dents but cares about them, which is why the lines in front of his 
office sometimes compete in length with the ones outside the 
more popular movie houses. It's a pleasure to report that the 
Board of Managers has given him its 10th annual Mark Van 
Doren teaching award. Shenton deserves to be congratulated. 
So does the Board—for its ability to recognize an outstanding 
instructor and its readiness to honor him. 

M.B.M. 


~ ..Columbia 
Cote 

Today 

ALUMNI ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

EDITOR Martin B. Margulies '61 Ray Robjnson , 41 chajrman 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR llene Barth Arthur Rothstein '35 

ART DIRECTOR C. Gordon Chapman Edward Hamilton'42 

r Kermit Lansner '42 

SPORTS EDITOR Steve Singer'64 Walter Wager'44 

ASSISTANT EDITOR Larry Lane '70 B y, ron Dobe11 ' 47 

John McDermott 54 

Published by Columbia College 

Columbia University 

New York, N. Y. 10027 
for 

Alumni and Friends of Columbia College 
Address all editorial communications to: 
Columbia College Today 

400 West 118th Street 

New York, N. Y. 10027 

Telephone (212) 280-3701 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE 
founded in 1754 

is the undergraduate liberal arts college 
of 2,700 men in 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

IN THIS ISSUE 

Around the Quads . 2 

No Room At The Bottom. 18 

Roar Lion Roar . 28 

C-O-L-U-M-B-l-A: Rah or Blah?. 34 

Talk of the Alumni. 40 

From Kerouac to Koch. 46 

They Liked Ike — As President of Columbia. 52 

Alumni Authors . 56 

Obituaries .. 58 

Cambodia is a Correspondent's Nightmare. 60 

Letters . 64 

COVER PHOTO BY SID SATTLER 






















GS AND THE COLLEGE: 
E PLURIBUS UNUM? 


Ever since the School of General 
Studies was established, it has com¬ 
peted with the College for space, fac¬ 
ulty and cash. The rivalry between the 
siblings has been spirited and at times 
acrimonious. Last November, Dean 
Carl F. Hovde suggested a solution: 
merger. 

Under his plan, which he released 
in a letter to the President, the degree 
programs of the two institutions 
would be combined. There would be 
one administrative structure, one ad¬ 
missions office, one faculty and one 
student body, all under the aegis of 
Columbia College. Degree candidates 
who presently enroll in G.S. would at¬ 
tend the College instead. The non¬ 
degree program now sponsored by 
General Studies would function inde¬ 
pendently. 


Should the proposal be adopted— 
and already it has run into determined 
opposition—the College would under¬ 
go three principal changes: 

• Women would be admitted for 
the first time in its 214-year history. 

• Roughly a third of its students— 
perhaps as many as 1400—would be at 
least 21 years old, the minimum age 
for admission to G.S. Of these, maybe 
half would be going to school part- 
time. 

• By adding those 1400 men and 
women to its own student body of 
2600, the College would expand to 
approximately one-and-one-half times 
its present size. 

Elsewhere in the same document, 
Hovde also recommended that the 
School of Engineering cease admitting 
freshmen on its own. The result would 


be to revive the old "professional op¬ 
tion" plan, still in effect for some stu¬ 
dents, whereby engineering majors 
spent their first three years in the Col¬ 
lege and two more in the Engineering 
School, earning at the end of five 
years both a B.A. and a B.S. 

Twenty or even 10 years ago, 
there were sound educational reasons 
for keeping G.S. and the College sepa¬ 
rate. No longer. The character of the 
G.S. student body has changed mark¬ 
edly, and so has the content of its 
degree program. When the School 
was founded, shortly after the second 
world war, it was envisioned as a cen¬ 
ter for adult education. Over the 
years, however, the average age of 
its students has declined, while admis¬ 
sions standards have risen. Originally 
authorized to grant only the B.S., Gen¬ 
eral Studies now awards the B.A. also. 

What was educationallv defens¬ 
ible in 1950 was also financially feasi¬ 
ble. But today, the maintenance of 


2 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










































two separate institutions, each largely 
duplicating the other's functions, has 
become a luxury which Columbia 
cannot afford. Throughout the 'sixties, 
the University was taking steps to end 
such duplication. It was in response 
to these steps that the Dean issued his 
proposal. 

Actually, the real question is not 
whether the two institutions should be 
consolidated. That, as the Dean 
pointed out, is already happening. 
Whenever two courses are offered in 
the same subject—one in the College, 
one in G.S.—it has become Columbia's 
policy to economize by eliminating 
one of them and permitting students 
from both schools to register for the 
other. The process, known as "cross¬ 
listing," is likely to be accelerated 
during the 'seventies. 

Thus, merger is coming, whether 
the College wills it or not. The issue 
therefore becomes one of how the 
merger will be accomplished: through 
what Hovde has called "dozens of un¬ 
related economic decisions which 
never raise the larger questions," or 
through a coherent, a priori plan 
which weighs educational considera¬ 
tions alongside financial ones. 

Nothing concerns the College 
more vitally than the calibre of its 
students. Nothing could alter its char¬ 
acter more completely, or with more 
destructive effect, than a student body 
whose excellence is not uniformly 
high. Yet today the College is often 
unable to control the quality of the 
men and women who sit in its class¬ 
rooms, because many of them are 
admitted by other schools: Barnard, 
Engineering and General Studies. The 
consensus among the faculty seems 
to be that the overall quality of G.S. 
students, while much improved, does 
not always measure up to College 
standards. 

One of the Dean's purposes, then, 
is to establish a quality control which 
is presently lacking. Another, of 
course, is to save money for the Uni¬ 
versity by merging the administrative 
staffs of the two schools. The com¬ 
bined staff would be somewhat 
larger than either of the separate staffs 
is today, but smaller than both of 
them together. A third objective, 
though less urgent than the others, is 
to create a more diversified student 
body. 



MARRIAGE BROKER: Columbia's three undergraduate divisions 
are already approaching de facto union, and Dean Carl F. Hovde 
wants to make it official. 


From the Dean's Proposal 

Columbia has been moving towards the amalgamation of work 
in the College and General Studies anyway. It has done so mind¬ 
lessly through a ten-year series of ad hoc decisions involving cross¬ 
registration and the elimination of duplicate offerings in both 
schools ... If there is to be amalgamation, let us call it that and plan 
for it educationally — not continue to make dozens of unrelated 
economic decisions which never raise the large questions and can 
only damage us in the long run. 

Here and there one hears remarks to the effect that the College 
is now an historical anachronism, that it was fine in its day but that 
its day is over. This is nonsense. People who say this often seem to 
be restless and impatient in ways not always easy for them to artic¬ 
ulate or for me to discern — it is usually a kind of animal grunt. 

The sweet sounds of internal harmony are not conspicuously 
audible in our time when groups are identified by narrow ranges 
of age; rather, cohesive social atmospheres depend upon associa¬ 
tions of attitude and interest, and less upon being 17, 21 or 35 than 
at any time in my experience. 

Our position in New York City simply emphasizes that we must 
accommodate our enterprise to the period and time we live in, and 
the presence of excellent older students here is something we 
should take advantage of. As a university we do so already, of 
course, but we should do so with coherence and sensible organi¬ 
zation — as one animal, and not a bag of cats. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


3 










These benefits are not universally 
appreciated. Indeed, if one were to 
judge solely from remarks made 
about the proposal and its author, one 
would find it hard to believe that the 
parties to the controversy are actually 
good friends. Predictably, the loudest 
outcry came from the School of Gen¬ 
eral Studies, whose dean, Aaron War¬ 
ner, characterized the plan as "a 
straight political grab by the College.” 
Dean Hovde, he charged, ”is inter¬ 
ested in one thing—coeducation. We 
have it and the College wants it.” 

Dean Wesley Hennessy of the En¬ 
gineering School was more restrained, 
but expressed fears for his school's 
recruiting and financial aid programs. 
And Professor of Industrial Engineer¬ 
ing Seymour Melman complained that 
"the conservative and unimaginative 
qualities of the Columbia College 
Committee on Instruction give no 
ground for confidence in any major 
improvements from an amalgama¬ 
tion.” There is, he asserts, "more in¬ 
novativeness and imagination in the 
School of Engineering and in General 
Studies than in Columbia College.” 
Other Engineering professors, how¬ 
ever, gave their cautious approval, 
though one of them—Charles F. Bonilla 
--stipulated that the Engineering fac¬ 
ulty must retain a voice in admissions 
policy. 

But the most aggressive and vocal 
criticisms, next to Dean Warner's, 
were uttered by President William J. 
McGill. McGill, to the surprise of 
many, jumped into the fray almost 
immediately, terming the scheme 
"political rather than educational in 
nature.” "A tactical mistake,” said one 
College administrator, shaking his 
head. "A mistake,” agreed a chas¬ 
tened McGill two months later. "My 
style,” he explained, "is to stake a 
position and await the excitement that 
will follow. The trouble is that most 
people here lay tremendous stress on 
what the President thinks—as if I had 
the capacity to restructure education. 
My opinion is just one of many.” He 
remains opposed, but less pugna¬ 
ciously so. He is particularly reluctant 
to see the College's CC and Humani¬ 
ties requirement imposed on G.S. stu¬ 
dents as the only avenue to an under¬ 
graduate degree. 

The President, meanwhile, had 
proferred a suggestion of his own. 


"There is no law written on tablets of 
stone,” he declared, "saying that a 
college education must be four years 
long for each and every student.” 
McGill would establish a two-year un¬ 
dergraduate degree for students who 
want to move on quickly into profes¬ 
sional schools, and recast at least 
some undergraduate majors to in¬ 
clude professional training. McGill 
has often attributed student alienation 
to frustration brought on by too many 
years of schooling. 

Now it was Hovde's turn. The 
proposal, he warned, "flies in the face 
of what we've historically tried to do. 
We're not a pre-professional training 


Spectator called it "the-coming 
purge.” President McGill, more se¬ 
dately, described it as a "reorganiza¬ 
tion.” Both were referring to a com¬ 
plete restructuring -of the central 
administration, as yet only partially 
completed, pursuant to which: 

• Nobel laureate and physics pro¬ 
fessor Polykarp Kusch was installed 
last November in the newly created 
position of Executive Vice President 
for Academic Affairs. The post, second 
in importance only to the President's, 
was carved out of the old vice presi¬ 
dency for academic affairs—also held 
by Dr. Kusch—and the provost's office. 
As vice president, Kusch had been the 
University's chief educational policy¬ 
maker. Now, by taking on the pro¬ 
vost's duties, he assumes responsibility 
for the academic budget as well. 

• A second executive vice presi¬ 
dency, for administration, has also 
been established. When it is filled, 
probably by early spring, the leader¬ 
ship at Low will consist of a "troika,” 
with the President at the top and the 
two executive vice presidents directly 
beneath. The new administrative vice 
president will supervise all the non- 
academic concerns of the University, 
now divided among three separate 
offices: business, administration, and 
development and alumni relations. 
The last of these will be renamed ex¬ 
ternal relations, and will deal with 
alumni and community affairs. 


school. We want to produce thought¬ 
ful people.” "Right out of the 'fifties,” 
snorted another administrator. "What 
really alienates students are universi¬ 
ties which serve only to channel them 
into establishment careers.” "One- 
third to one-half of our students want 
to be channeled,” replies McGill. 
"They have their rights too.” 

Both proposals, together with 
several others, are now in the hands 
of a special senate subcommittee 
which is studying coordination in un¬ 
dergraduate education. It will be some 
time before G.S. students sit in Dwight 
Miner's CC section, or sophomores 
emerge with a sheepskin. 


• Two administrators have al¬ 
ready left Low Library: Provost Peter 
Kenen and,Assistant Provost for Plan¬ 
ning Bernard Friedman. More are ex¬ 
pected to follow. The title of Provost 
was first abolished, then revived and 
conferred upon Dr. Kusch. This was 
done because the Provost is the only 
officer, besides the President, who is 
eligible under the University charter 
to sit on the Board of Trustees. Other¬ 
wise the gesture would have been 
purely symbolic: it had already been 
understood that the functions of the 
office would be placed under the 
jurisdiction of the new academic vice 
president. 

The purpose of the restructuring 
is to increase administrative efficiency, 
rather than to effect a direct saving in 
dollars. University officials hence¬ 
forward will report to one of the two 
executive vice presidents instead of to 
the President, thereby freeing the 
latter from the burdens of day-to-day 
management. Any monetary benefits 
will come, not from the elimination of 
positions, but from the establishment 
of clearer lines of authority. These, it 
is hoped, will help to minimize dupli¬ 
cation and enable the central adminis¬ 
tration to keep better track of pro¬ 
grams and expenditures. 

Nowhere were the old lines 
fuzzier than in the shaping of educa¬ 
tional policy. For nearly three years, 
since the departure of Vice President 


SAILING TO BYZANTIUM 


4 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






IN: Polykarp Kusch,says a fellow-administrator, is 
now "aller-powerful." 



OUT: The President couldn't find "the right vehicle" 
for former Provost Peter Kenen. 


and Provost David Truman, the policy¬ 
making and budgeting functions had 
been divided. In March, 1969, the 
academic vice presidency (together 
with the title of Dean of Faculties) 
went to Kusch. Kenen, who at 38 is 
considered one of the nation's bright¬ 
est young economists, was named 
provost four months later. 

The arrangement was not a suc¬ 
cess. "There was no personal feud," 
says one official, referring to specula¬ 
tion that the two administrators didn't 
get along. Neither, however, did they 
enjoy the close personal relationship 
which their overlapping duties re¬ 
quired of them. 

"Suppose," the official continued, 
"a dean came to Kenen and said, 'I 
need two more assistant professor¬ 
ships.' Any decision that Kenen might 
have made would have impinged on 
Kusch's authority over academic pro¬ 
grams. Furthermore, Kusch could al¬ 
ways veto, because he was the senior 
officer, but there'd be a great waste of 
time and effort, and some people were 


naturally tempted to play them off 
against one another. If the dean 
couldn't get what he wanted from 
Kusch, he'd go to Kenen. 

"Besides, you can't separate aca¬ 
demic policy-making from control 
over the budget. The budget is often 
the only means by which the policy¬ 
making authority can exercise leader¬ 
ship and control." 

What was needed was not mutual 
esteem or even personal friendship, 
but a rapport so profound that both 
could be counted upon to know and 
share one another's thoughts on al¬ 
most any given issue. Between the 
60-year-old physicist and his younger, 
more volatile associate, no such rap¬ 
port existed. 

Clearly, therefore, the two posi¬ 
tions had to be merged, and the de¬ 
cision to consolidate them was 
announced early last October. Kenen 
reportedly was more interested in the 
new job than Kusch, who has made 
no secret of his desire to return to 
teaching, and is expected to do so 


shortly. Then, why Kusch? 

Not, certainly, because of any 
policy differences between them. On 
the major decisions which have been 
taken since McGill's arrival—the im¬ 
plementation of new budgeting pro¬ 
cedures, the cutback in the allocation 
to the School of the Arts (discussed 
elsewhere in this issue)—the two men 
are essentially in accord. 

McGill may have thought that 
Kenen's genius could be used to better 
advantage in an advisory rather than 
an executive post. After Kusch's ap¬ 
pointment, Kenen stayed on in Low 
for the remainder of the semester as 
a special adviser to the President. Fie 
is credited, together with Friedman, 
with the staff work which led to a 
recently-published five-year program 
to eliminate the University's deficit. 

On the other hand, it is possible 
that Kusch's very reluctance to take 
the job, coupled with his age, mili¬ 
tated against the younger man. "Who¬ 
ever steps into that assignment is 
going to have to make some tough 


AROUND THE QUADS 


5 










decisions and take an awful lot of 
flak/' one official pointed out. "You 
don't want someone whose whole 
career is in front of him, and who has 
too much riding on success." Had 
Kenen been chosen, moreover, his pre¬ 
sumably would have been a long¬ 
term appointment. By favoring Kusch, 
who is likely to leave within the year, 
McGill has accomplished two pur¬ 
poses: he has found a tough, capable 
administrator to deal with the current 
fiscal crisis, and he has gained an ad¬ 
ditional six to 12 months in which to 
search at leisure for a permanent suc¬ 
cessor. 

Does the selection of Kusch, in¬ 
stead of Kenen or some outsider, have 
any implications for the College? The 
consensus is probably not. A College 
administrator summed it up best when 
he said, "Kusch was always all-power¬ 
ful. Now he's just aller-powerful." 
Kusch is anxious to end the wasteful 
duplication of courses among the un¬ 
dergraduate liberal arts schools of the 
University, and favors greater cross¬ 


listing—i.e. the opening of sections to 
students from more than one divi¬ 
sion—as a means of achieving this 
goal. But so does Kenen, and so, ap¬ 
parently, does McGill. 

One of the little-noticed casual¬ 
ties of the reshuffling has been the re¬ 
search which was carried on in As¬ 
sistant Provost Friedman's office. The 
office was dissolved at the end of the 
fall semester, and economist Fried¬ 
man, a close associate of Kenen's, has 
gone back to teaching. Some find the 
decision paradoxical, especially at the 
present time. The University is trying 
to gather information about itself in 
order to trim its budget intelligently 
and eliminate duplication caused by 
too much decentralization. The clos¬ 
ing down of its central fact-finding 
bureau appears, to many, to be in¬ 
consistent with either objective. Some 
half a dozen research projects remain 
unfinished, among them a survey of 
income distribution of Columbia Col¬ 
lege students and their families. The 
study was triggered by widespread re¬ 


ports that the College (along with 
other private schools) is losing its 
middle class constituency. Some of the 
projects, including this one, may be 
completed elsewhere in the Univer¬ 
sity. There will be lacking, however, 
the coordination which one finds in 
a single centralized office, as well as 
the highly specialized skills of Dr. 
Friedman and his staff. 

As for Kenen, he left Low Library 
in January and accepted a research 
professorship in his old department, 
Economics. Next year he goes to Palo 
Alto as a Fellow at the Center for 
Advanced Studies in the Behavioral 
Sciences, and after that he will return 
to the classroom. "I'd like to draw him 
back into Low at some subsequent 
date," says President McGill, "when 
I can construct a long-range economic 
planning structure. But at the present 
time I just don't have the right vehicle 
for him." Other administrators may 
lack vehicles before the semester is 
out, and it won't be because of the 
strike at General Motors. 


6 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










THE MONEY 
GAME 

Perhaps even more significant, 
though less dramatic, than the re¬ 
shuffling of personnel is a newly- 
instituted change in budgeting pro¬ 
cedures. The purpose, according to 
University spokesmen, is to impose a 
spending limit by substituting central 
planning for the helter-skelter system 
of allocations which prevailed in the 
past. 

Formerly, the academic depart¬ 
ments of the liberal arts divisions—the 
College, General Studies, Graduate 
Faculties — would present their re¬ 
quests to the budget subcommittee 
for arts and sciences, consisting of the 
deans of the three schools. The sub¬ 
committee, after discussions with 
University officials, would pare down 
the proposals and submit a figure to 
Low. There, the figure would be ap¬ 
proved, with or without alterations, 
and an additional sum appropriated 
for administrative expenses. 

Now, the process has been re¬ 
versed. A spending limit is voted by 
the trustees, first for the University 
as a whole, then for the various divi¬ 
sions. The figure is based upon stud¬ 
ies by Vice President Kusch and his 
staff, and on conversations with the 
different deans. A lump sum, to cover 
administrative as well as academic 
costs, is then allocated to each divi¬ 


sion. For budgeting purposes, the en¬ 
tire arts and sciences complex —in¬ 
cluding the School of International 
Affairs —is treated as a single unit. 
Next, the four deans—Andrew Cordier 
of S.I.A., George Fraenkel of Graduate 
Faculties, Carl Hovde of the College 
and Aaron Warner of General Studies 
—divide their appropriation between 
them, deciding how much money to 
give to the departments. 

At first glance, the differences be¬ 
tween the present system and the old 
one may seem inconsequential. The 
departments, it would appear, are still 
trying to wring as much as they can 
out of the central administration, with 
the same three deans (plus Cordier) 
sitting in the middle. True, the deans 
are sitting as heads of their respective 
schools, rather than as members of 
the subcommittee on the budget, and 
the bargaining process begins in Low 
instead of ending there. But are there 
any substantive changes? 

There are. For one thing, until this 
year there was no effective central 
control over expenditures. If a new 
program was proposed and seemed 
promising, it went through. The 
budget, comments one administrator, 
was “an exercise in addition." The 
final figure had to be approved by the 
trustees, but lack of vital information 
often made their review a formality. 
Henceforward, officials promise, there 
will be no haphazard funding of 
projects. Each school will be given a 
ceiling, based on an overview of the 
University's needs and resources, and 


the ceiling will be enforced. 

Second: in the past,the deans had 
to agree only on the division of 
academic expenses. This winter, for 
the first time, their joint appropriation 
included administrative costs as well. 
Their total allocation, moreover, fell 
some $800,000 short of their com¬ 
bined expenditures for the current 
fiscal year, and administration is the 
area where much of the trimming will 
have to be done. A senior professor 
observed: “Low is saying to these 
people that it lacks the expertise to 
earmark the money, and therefore 
they'll have to do it. In theory, that 
sounds reasonable enough. But ac¬ 
tually they're being told to sit down 
like fighting dogs and tear one another 
up." 

Another effect, however, could 
be to increase the bargaining power 
of the undergraduate divisions. Be¬ 
sides, University officials insist that 
it would be next to impossible to 
deal with each school individually. "A 
large part of the budget still consists 
of faculty salaries," says one, “and the 
four liberal arts schools all have a sin¬ 
gle faculty. If we had such things as 
graduate departments and College 
departments, it might be a different 
story. But as matters stand, arts and 
sciences is a natural unit." 

“As matters stand" aptly prefaces 
any general discussion of the overall 
financial picture at Columbia, for 
there have been, as yet, no major 
structural innovations. Instead, the 
President and his associates have 
chosen to work through existing units, 
"pending further information," in the 
words of a vice presidential aide. 
Once the information is in, steep cut¬ 
backs can be expected, although it is 
not anticipated that these will result 
in the elimination of whole schools. 
McGill himself has predicted, for in¬ 
stance, that freshman athletics will 
soon be abandoned, not only by Co¬ 
lumbia but by other Ivy colleges. And 
Associate Dean of Faculties Ivar Berg 
has said, “The multiversity which in¬ 
structed any man in any subject is no 
longer workable. Henceforward, we're 
going to pursue a policy of 'selective 
excellence.' We —the administration 
and the senate—will decide what we 
can do well, and will support only 
those programs which are deemed 
worthwhile." 



AROUND THE QUADS 


7 








VANISHING BREED: Theater Arts students perform Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna. 


OFF-BROADWAY CLOSING 


One of the things which Columbia 
ought to do well, here in the theater 
capital of the world, is support a 
drama program. But its two ventures 
into the field have both ended in fail¬ 
ure. 

The Brander Matthews School of 
Dramatic Arts was only ten years old 
when it foundered in 1958. Seven 
years later, Columbia tried again. A 
School of the Arts was established, 
with a separate division for theater. 
Today the School survives, but the 
Theater Arts division has been abol¬ 
ished, the first victim of the cutbacks 
which President McGill promised 
upon taking office last September. 

The fate of the Arts School and its 
theater division was the single most 
controversial issue on the campus last 
semester, and the one which aroused 
the greatest bitterness. Criticism of the 
administration might have been 
muted, if not silenced, had the matter 
been handled differently. Whatever 
financial benefits may accrue, the out¬ 
come was a public relations disaster— 
and, many insist, a cultural calamity 
besides. 

There is evidence that at least 
some administrators had had their eyes 
on the Arts School, and on Theater 
Arts in particular, as early as January, 


1970. However, rio clear warning 
sounded until the following fall. "We 
knew," says Theater Arts chairman 
Bernard Beckerman, "that Columbia 
was in trouble, that some belt-tighten¬ 
ing would be necessary. But we were 
certainly given no notice that we were 
in trouble, except for the general 
notice of University-wide contrac¬ 
tion." 

Then, on October 28, President 
McGill addressed a meeting of the 
Arts School faculty, and what he said 
there disturbed many of his listeners. 
Several complained that the. President 
was evasive in answering their ques¬ 
tions. The gist of his remarks, accord¬ 
ing to members of the audience, was 
that the Arts School was financially 
"out of line," but that the University 
would rather trim administrative costs 
than risk doing damage to academic 
programs. "Nothing has been de¬ 
cided," he reportedly assured the 
assembly. "Everything is open." After 
he had finished, as the faculty politely 
applauded him, he quipped: "Better 
not. You may feel differently after a 
while." "We thought," one professor 
observed wryly, "that something was 
being hinted at." 

What was being hinted at became 
apparent the following morning, when 


Dean Davidson Taylor of the School 
of the Arts met at Low Library with 
McGill, Vice Presidents Polykarp 
Kusch, Warren Goodell and Douglass 
Hunt, Provost Peter Kenen and Spe¬ 
cial Assistant to the President John 
Bornemann. There, he was offered 
two possible solutions to his school's 
financial problems. One was for the 
School of the Arts to cease to exist, 
with its divisions—excluding theater- 
being absorbed by other units of the 
University. The other was for the 
School to continue —but without 
Theater Arts. Either way, the drama 
program would disappear. "It wasn't 
any kind of mandate," an administra¬ 
tor explained afterward. "It was simply 
our forecast of what they could do 
about the situation. We were open to 
counter-proposals." Dean Taylor asked 
for time to consider the matter and 
consult with his faculty. 

Negotiations continued through¬ 
out November. Early in the month, 
news of the impending cutback 
leaked to Spectator, to McGill's visible 
chagrin. Then, on December 8, the 
Committee on Instruction of the Arts 
School met with Associate Dean of 
Faculties Ivar Berg, Assistant Vice 
President Alexander Stoia and As¬ 
sistant Provost Bruce Bassett. About 
half an hour earlier, Vice President 
Kusch had informed Dean Taylor by 
telephone that his budget for 1971- 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


SCHOOL OF THE ARTS 







72 would be $500,000—some $300,000 
less than the School expects to spend 
in 1970-71. 

After the meeting began, com¬ 
mittee members quickly agreed that 
Theater Arts could not survive unless 
the allocation were raised. What, one 
of them wondered, would become of 
the division's 90 M.F.A. candidates and 
ten Ph.D. candidates? At this point 
Stoia revealed, for the first time, that 
University officials had put feelers out 
to Yale and N.Y.U. in late October, to 
ascertain whether those schools would 
absorb Columbia's graduate students 
if the theater division were to close. 

Perhaps, suggested MacDowell 
Professor of Music Jack Beeson, 
Theater Arts could carry on if the 
total appropriation were increased to 
$570,000. If so, replied Berg and 
Stoia, they would try to find the ad¬ 
ditional money. But shortly after the 
three administrators left the meeting, 
the committee members agreed that 
the theater program could not be 
maintained even at the adjusted fig¬ 
ure. Two days later, Spectator carried 
the news that the School of the Arts 
had abolished its Theater Arts division. 

For many, the decision left a 
bitter aftertaste. Some, like Associate 
Professor of Theater Arts Albert 
Bermel, challenge it on its merits. "For 
a school that started out only four 
years ago," he says, "we thought we 
were doing well. Applications were 
up, the quality of students had risen, 
and a lot of college professors were 
recommending us to their students." 
University administrators agree that 
the program is academically sound. 
They contend, however, that it would 
have needed substantial sums of 
money in the future—and that the 
Vnoney isn't there. ("Fair enough," 
responds one of Bermel's colleagues. 
"But don't you think they might have 
shared their thoughts with us?") 

Others, while accepting the need 
for a cutback, accuse the administra¬ 
tion of lack of candor. For instance: 
Columbia officials remind critics that 
the decision to eliminate Theater Arts 
was made by the faculty of the School 
of the Arts, not by the University. The 
distinction is lost on many, since the 
$500,000 allotment left the faculty 
with no other choice. As one adminis¬ 
trator conceded, "We forced them to 
make our decision." 



HEDDA GABLER: A more appropriate choice 
might have been Ghosts. 


Even more serious are allegations 
that all the important issues were re¬ 
solved long before Dean Taylor and 
his colleagues were called in for 
meaningless "consultations." McGill, 
while denying the allegations, now 
agrees with those of his critics who 
claim that the administration should 
have been more open from the be¬ 
ginning. "The trouble with circulating 
proposals before you decide what to 
do about them," he points out, "is 
that people get the idea that these are 
decisions instead of suggestions, and 
we wanted to avoid creating this im¬ 
pression. And then, in the fall, we 
thought it would be better to try to 
reach an amiable, private agreement 
with the Arts School, instead of hold¬ 
ing public discussions. Thus, we 
created the appearance that we were 
trying to hide something. 

"I guess," he concluded ruefully, 


"we made a mistake." 

Some continue to wonder why 
Theater Arts should have been the 
first, and so far the only, division to be 
eliminated under the University's 
austerity program. According to Mc¬ 
Gill and his associates, the future of 
the Arts School had to be charted 
fairly quickly, because its present 
building—which is owned by the city 
—is to be demolished this summer. 
Theater Arts was singled out as the 
most expensive of the School's five 
divisions. But several members of the 
Arts faculty are convinced that the 
answer is more complex. The Presi¬ 
dent, they charge, wanted to demon¬ 
strate to potential donors that he was 
serious about reducing the Univer¬ 
sity's deficit. The Arts School was 
vulnerable because, being new, it had 
no powerful or wealthy alumni to de¬ 
fend it. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


9 













What will become of the School 
now? In June, it will move from its 
present headquarters in Myles Cooper 
into Dodge Hall, where, for the first 
time, it will be located on the main 
campus. The Theater Arts division will 
be phased out gradually, giving its 
students—most of whom are enrolled 
in the two-year M.F.A. program—an 
opportunity to take their degrees here 
if they wish. (Significantly, these stu¬ 
dents, offered a choice between re¬ 
maining or transferring to other 
schools, voted almost unanimously 
to complete their studies at Co¬ 
lumbia.) Its faculty, presumably, will go 
elsewhere — except for chairman Beck- 
erman, the only tenured professor, 
who has been assured of a position in 
another division of the University. 

Will Columbia, having twice 
failed to sustain a drama school, ever 
try a third time? "Not," says Dean 
Berg, "if we have no more promise of 
money than we had when we started 
this one." If not, warn Bermel and 
Beckerman, Columbia will be turning 
its back on a field which is attracting 
more and more acolytes every year. 
"Theater and film," says Bermel, "are 
what today's students want." And 
Beckerman adds: "It's paradoxical that 
Columbia should strive to reduce 
alienation among the young, and at 
the same time knock out one of the 
few programs in which the young are 
truly interested." 

Could Theater Arts, which' was 
undercapitalized from the beginning, 
somehow have raised the necessary 
money on its own? Administrators say 
no. Bermel and others label this as¬ 
sertion a self-fulfilling prophecy. "You 
can't raise funds for a school which is 
going under," explains Bermel. "Con¬ 
tributors want some assurance that 
we're going to be around. We kept 
asking McGill for some public affirma¬ 
tion that the program would continue, 
but we never got it." 

Even if a good angel had appeared 
at the last minute with a large enough 
gift to close Theater Arts' current 
deficit, Dean Taylor questions whether 
the University would have accepted 
the donation. "Theater," he reflects, 
"is always a continuing drain—not just 
theater schools, but any kind of seri¬ 
ous theater." As a rule, unfortunately, 
deus ex machina comes to the rescue 
only on the stage. 


DEATH IN THE 
FAMILY 

Austerity claimed a second victim 
early last winter, when President 
McGill announced the closing of the 
Columbia Forum. The quarterly, which 
published scholarly articles on a vari¬ 
ety of subjects, acquired a nationwide 
reputation for excellence during its 13 
years of existence—at a cost, however; 
of $100,000 a year. The administration 
has resolved that it will no longer sup¬ 
port activities which are not, in the 
President's words, "intimately con¬ 
nected with our educational pro¬ 
gram." Unless the Forum can find out¬ 
side sources of funding, this winter's 
issue will be its last. 

In its place, the University will 
publish a chatty newsletter, Columbia 
Reports. The new publication, it is ex¬ 
pected, will prove to be a more effec¬ 
tive fund-raising instrument than the 
Forum. There is irony in the transition. 
Thirteen years ago, Forum was 
founded because the Columbia 
Chronicle , which was similar in format 
to Columbia Reports , was not paying 
its way. It was therefore decided, ac¬ 
cording to Forum editor Lee Ambrose, 
to establish a publication "with higher 
intellectual appeal." 

Mrs. Ambrose was informed as 
early as February, 1970, that the maga¬ 
zine might be discontinued. As a re¬ 
sult, there were fewer cries of "foul" 
than when Theater Arts was closed. 
This is not to imply, however, that the 
critics were silenced altogether. "A 
tragic mistake!" exclaimed one. "You 
have to remember that McGill's a psy¬ 
chologist," reasoned another. "He 
figured that by eliminating the Forum , 
he'd publicize the University's plight. 
The more that alumni cry over the 
Forum , the better it'll be for Columbia. 
The magazine is just his sacrificial 
lamb." 

Even these comments, heard 
around the campus, were mild com¬ 
pared to responses from readers. Let¬ 
ters flpoded the Forum's editorial of¬ 
fices once the news became known, 
filling four pages of its final issue. A 
typical one read: "Preserving the 
Forum as a means of communication 
between the University and its own 
graduates would help reassert the pri- 



EDITOR: Lee Ambrose still 
hopes to save the Forum. 


macy of intellect in University life and 
its projection into the whole social 
environment. It might also be worth it 
in mere cost/benefit terms, in the 
sense that the intellectual elite among 
Columbia's graduates might thus be 
encouraged to maintain their shaken 
allegiance to the University." Another 
correspondent accused the adminis¬ 
tration of "infamy, tastelessness and 
lack of foresight." 

With the letters came pledges of 
financial support, from ten dollars for 
a subscription to hefty donations. The 
Forum has never tried to raise money 
before, but is now giving serious con¬ 
sideration to striking out on its own. 
It will be some months, Mrs. Ambrose 
believes, before the feasibility of such 
a project can be assessed. 

Mrs. Ambrose is particularly sur¬ 
prised by administration complaints 
that the Forum did not fulfill its origi¬ 
nal purposes, which, as President Mc¬ 
Gill described them in a letter to 
alumni, were to "serve as a vehicle for 
increasing alumni support, as a show¬ 
case for accomplishments of faculty 
and alumni, and as a channel of infor¬ 
mation between the University and its 
alumni." 

"We were never intended to be a 
fund-raising instrument," she says. "At 
least, not directly. 

"It was thought that yyg could 
strengthen the image of Columbia as 
a place of intellectual ferment. Instead 
of reporting an award to an important 
writer, we'd present his work." 

The University may or may not 
reap significant financial benefits from 
the closing of the Forum. Surely it will 
be impoverished intellectually, to¬ 
gether with the academic community 
everywhere. Money is scarce these 
days, but so is excellence. 


10 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





TAXING PROBLEM 

Spectator, the much-beleagured 
campus daily, is threatened by finan¬ 
cial pressures of another kind. The 
newspaper, stripped last April of its 
annual subsidy from the University, 
now faces the loss of its income tax 
exemption, in what could become a 
test case for college publications 
throughout the country. 

Tax-exempt organizations are for¬ 
bidden by law to take sides in political 
campaigns or speak out on pending 
legislation. When Spectator , an inde¬ 
pendent corporation since 1962, first 
sought exemption, it appended to its 
application a codicil, stating that it 
sometimes endorsed candidates and 
commented editorially on legislative 
proposals. The codicil apparently went 
unnoticed at the time. Last summer, 
as a result of what Internal Revenue 
Service officials have called a "routine 
audit," it was discovered that Spec¬ 
tator had in fact supported such aspi¬ 
rants for office as Norman Mailer, Nel¬ 
son Rockefeller and Eldridge Cleaver. 

The newspaper could have 
ducked the controversy by agreeing 
not to endorse candidates in the fu¬ 
ture. But the editors have declined to 
take the easy way out. Explained 


editor-in-chief Martin Flumenbaum: 
"It isn't only a question Spectator 
anymore. The entire University has a 
stake in what happens to us." The 
I.R.S. investigation, he agrees, may in¬ 
deed have been a "routine audit" 
when it was launched in November 
1969, but it took on what he calls "a 
new dimension" as a result of the 
Spring, 1970 disturbances. Now, he 
contends, the case has become a prov¬ 
ing ground for government efforts to 
stifle dissent on the campuses. 

As yet, there have been only some 
preliminary skirmishes. The district 
director has declared that the exemp¬ 
tion should be revoked, but no ruling 
has been issued. When it comes, prob¬ 
ably late this Spring, Spectator will be 
able to appeal to the courts if the find¬ 
ings are unfavorable. 

Meanwhile, the newspaper has re¬ 
tained a law firm, Thatcher Proffitt 
Prizer Crawley and Wood, which also 
represents the University. Flumen¬ 
baum emphasizes, however, that the 
firm is not acting in its capacity as Uni¬ 
versity counsel, and is charging a fee 
for its services. Several Columbia Law 
School professors have offered their 
assistance gratis if the case should go 
to court. Spectator cannot afford to 
pay for extended litigation. 


Flumenbaum also notes that the 
daily has endorsed no candidates since 
the controversy erupted. "We just 
won't say we won't," he declares. 

A spokesman for Thatcher Proffitt 
has assessed Spectator's chances in 
court as "about 50-50." He still hopes, 
however, that I.R.S. itself will let the 
matter drop. "After all," he points out, 
"they'd be making trouble for them¬ 
selves as well as for us. If they revoke 
the Spectator exemption, presumably 
they're going to have to revoke a lot 
of others." 

The loss of the federal exemption 
would not, by itself, cripple Spectator 
financially, since the newspaper in re¬ 
cent years has earned no profit on 
which to pay taxes. What would hurt 
would be the loss of the New York 
State sales tax exemption, which 
would follow almost inevitably. Also, 
the University would be forced to 
charge the daily for office space which 
is now provided free, or risk having 
its own exemption taken away. 

On January 15, University Senate 
by voice vote adopted a resolution, 
endorsing "Spectator's decision to test 
the proposed interpretation of the In¬ 
ternal Revenue Code." Now it re¬ 
mains for I.R.S. to speak, and after¬ 
wards, perhaps, the courts. 



AROUND THE QUADS 


11 








SEPTEMBER, (967 


TUITION 

TREADMILL 

Some College traditions have 
faded, but a new and grim one is 
emerging, and may soon change the 
nature of Columbia. When Vice Presi¬ 
dent and Provost Polykarp Kusch an¬ 
nounced an impending tuition rise 
last November, it was the fourth in as 
many years. The amount of the in¬ 
crease, originally $200, has since been 
hiked to $300. Last year's seniors paid 
$1900 annually when they were fresh¬ 
men; next year's seniors will pay 
$2800. 

Columbia, like other institutions, 
has tried to keep pace with spiraling 
educational costs by increasing both 
its tuition and the amount of financial 
aid it gives to its needier students. The 
ones hardest hit, naturally enough, are 
students from middle class families— 
those who can neither absorb the ris¬ 
ing fees nor qualify for assistance. If 
the trend continues, officials fear, the 
middle class will gradually be 
squeezed out of the nation's private 
colleges and forced to attend state 
schools. 

Yet another problem looms, for 
financial aid resources—which have 
hitherto been adequate—will now be 
strained almost to bursting. Harland 
Hoisington, College Director for Fi¬ 
nancial Aid, anticipates an increase in 
"admit-deny" letters—letters which in¬ 
form freshmen that they have been 
accepted into the College but not 
awarded scholarships. 



Even with the recent tuition raise, 
says Hoisington, Columbia will remain 
"a whisker below the Ivy average," 
and just about average among North¬ 
eastern private schools. But declining 
government grants and alumni con¬ 
tributions will probably force adminis¬ 
trators to seek new ways of keeping its 
scholarship program competitive. 

One such measure, suggests As¬ 
sistant Vice-President Robert Cooper, 
who directs financial aid for the entire 
University, may be a new type of loan. 
The plan, similar to one which has just 
been instituted at Yale, would require 
recipients, upon graduating, to repay 
their tuition in annual installments 
consisting of a specified percentage of 
their incomes. The percentage would 
be uniform, with the result that alumni 
in higher income brackets would pay 
back a greater sum each year than 
those earning less money. Moreover, 
the obligation would terminate a spe¬ 
cified number of years after gradua¬ 
tion—say, 30 or 35—whether or not the 
debt were discharged in full. 

The acceptance of the formula, 
however, would not eliminate the 
underlying problem of continuous tui¬ 
tion increases. In Low Library, where 
talk of assets, deficits and infinitely 
more complex economic principles 
fills the air, it may be true, as one 
official has said, that "the worst alter¬ 
native to raising tuition is not raising 
it." But to students and their hard- 
pressed families, the recurring head¬ 
line "University to Increase Tuition" 
is just another wedge of alienation, 
disenchantment and frustration. 


CHUGGING 

ALONG 

On the morning of October 10, 
1914, the largest fire in Columbia's 
history gutted University Hall. The 
entire upper portion of the 13-year- 
old structure was levelled in the blaze, 
including the offices of Spectator , 
Jester and the New York State Prison 
Reform Bureau. 

Few tears were shed over the loss. 
Indeed, President Nicholas Murray 
Butler was almost jubilant. So was 
Spectator. 

"The part of the building which 
was destroyed," the President ex¬ 
plained two days later, "was built to 
serve a temporary purpose and was 
kept in use longer than was antici¬ 
pated, since the University has been 
without funds to complete University 
Hall in accordance with its original 
plans." 

At last, proclaimed the news¬ 
paper, "the building which until 12:45 
a.m. Saturday was one of the common 
eyesores of the campus" could be re¬ 
constructed as the architect had en¬ 
visioned, before money shortages 
forced contractors to stop at the first 
story. 

Spectator exulted too soon. The 
necessary funds still were not forth¬ 
coming, and the new University Hall 
differed little from the old one. Stu¬ 
dents nicknamed it "the steamboat on 
the hill," because of its location and 
the pair of smokestacks which pro¬ 
truded from its roof. 

The steamboat sailed on through 
the decades, attaining a remarkable 
longevity for so temporary a structure. 
Then, on January 14,1960, the Univer¬ 
sity announced that it would build a 
new gymnasium in Morningside Park 
on land leased from the city. Although 
it was the middle of the examination 
period, Spectator published a special 
issue, in which it traced the history of 
the existing building and noted that its 
demise was nearly half a century over¬ 
due. 

The rest of the story is well- 
known. Money came in slowly at first, 
in spite of a high-powered fund-rais¬ 
ing campaign, and by 1968 construc¬ 
tion had progressed only as far as a 


12 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




















COLUMBIA'S DELTA QUEEN: University Hall before Uris was built on top of it. 


hole in the ground. Meanwhile, the 
Business School had erected a modern 
skyscraper on top of University Hall, 
obliterating the smokestacks but leav¬ 
ing Columbia athletic teams in the 
antiquated facilities below. In the 
Spring 1968 uprising, the new gym was 
the principal target of the radicals, 
and the park site was abandoned. 

Two years later, architect I. M. 
Pei submitted his master plan, in 
which he called for the construction 
of an underground gym beneath South 
Field. But the proposal was as expen¬ 
sive as it was ambitious, and late last 
fall President McGill announced that 


he had rejected it. 

The final chapter may have been 
written early in February, when Co¬ 
lumbia released plans for a $9.5 mil¬ 
lion renovation and expansion of the 
plant at University Hall. The new facili¬ 
ties will include a nine-lane swimming 
pool, 18 squash or handball courts, 
rooms for wrestling and fencing, and 
a 3822-seat gymnasium, fourth largest 
in the Ivy League. All will be housed 
in a pair of wings, four stories high, to 
extend north and west of the present 
building. The plans were designed by 
Eggers Partnership, the architects for 
the aborted Morningside Park gym. 


Athletic director Kenneth Ger- 
mann has hailed the project as "more 
than adequate," and notes that the re¬ 
furbishing will be completed much 
sooner than the South Field under¬ 
taking would have been. 

The trustees and the senate must 
still approve the plans before work can 
begin. If they do—and no difficulty is 
anticipated—University Hall will at last 
be accepted as a fixture on the campus 
where it has stood for 70 years. The 
durable old steamboat has been re¬ 
prieved more times than the late Caryl 
Chessman, and is likely to outlast us 
all. 


AROUND THE QUADS 


13 


j 




















CONNECTING: Director Aaron Muravchik (right) chats with 
other members of Connection staff. 


TURNING OFF 

The traditional service societies, 
such as Blue Key and Van Am, have 
been joined recently by a newer 
group offering a very different kind 
of service. According to executive 
director Aaron Muravchik, the group, 
called Connection, deals with "drug 
problems and general human prob¬ 
lems such as loneliness and apathy." 

Muravchik is a relative new¬ 
comer to Connection, which was 
first connected in the fall of '69 by 
three College seniors. The three, 
graduates of Encounter Inc., a Green¬ 
wich Village-based drug rehabilita- 
tation center, saw a need for an 
Encounter-type program at Columbia. 
It was rough going at first, until Earl 
Hall took them under its wing. Not 
only did Earl Hall provide free space 
and telephone facilities, but its per¬ 
sonnel—in particular, Jan Gairmley, 
a hip, young British assistant to the 
Earl Hall director—helped the trio to 
obtain a sustaining grant from the 


Ecumenical Foundation. 

The program limped a long un¬ 
til June 1970, when the participants 
regrouped for an evaluation of ac¬ 
complishments and expectations. 
The verdict was that although the 
weekly encounter meetings were ac¬ 
complishing something, group mem¬ 
bers weren't committed enough to 
make real progress with their prob¬ 
lems. 

The result was a summer of dili¬ 
gent fund-raising, highlighted by a 
$7,500 grant solicited by Columbia 
President Andrew Cordier; a new 
name, Connection; and a new di¬ 
rector, Muravchik. 

Although not a Columbia stu¬ 
dent, Muravchik is amply qualified 
to deal with drug and drug-related 
problems. His own introduction to 
Encounter groups came in 1968, 
when, after being arrested for the 
fourth time, he was offered rehabili¬ 
tation at Encounter Inc. as an alterna¬ 
tive to prison. Muravchik spent 14 
months with the Encounter program, 
and continued afterward to work 


with the New York State Narcotics 
Control Commission, speak at 
schools, and assist parents' groups 
until October, when he came to Con¬ 
nection. 

Muravchik knows his work at 
Columbia will not be easy. "The col¬ 
lege community sees us as a threat," 
he explains. "The people around here 
are defensive about drug use, about 
their attitudes, and about what they 
do. We're attacking their drug use, 
attacking their loneliness, attacking 
how together they are." 

The program began to accept 
participants in October, and by De¬ 
cember, about five members had 
signed on. (Others had expressed 
interest, but shied away from the in¬ 
tense commitment which Connec¬ 
tion requires.) According to 
Muravchik, membership is not re¬ 
stricted to drug-users. "We want to 
help people who want help with 
their lives. We're not limiting it to 
people who are messed up with 
drugs, we're limiting it to people who 
are messed up." Muravchik feels that 
Columbia abounds with the latter. 

The program is not confined to 
Columbia people either. Residents of 
the Morningside Heights community 
are equally welcome, for Connection 
feels obligated to help anyone whom 
it can benefit. 

The program itself is what 
Muravchik calls a "therapeutic com¬ 
munity," based on interaction be¬ 
tween the members. The basic tool 
of interaction is the encounter ses¬ 
sion, usually directed by former drug 
users trained to lead the group. The 
goal of Connection for this year is a 
community of about forty, from Co¬ 
lumbia and Morningside, with equal 
numbers of men, and women. 

Muravchik's attitude towards 
Connection's success is one of opti¬ 
mism tempered with realism, but 
even the most pessimistic naysayer 
would probably be impressed by a 
$15,000 grant recently awarded to 
Connection by the New York State 
Narcotics Control Commission, and 
by plans to move into a Broadway 
storefront. What's needed now, ac¬ 
cording to the director, is for "peo¬ 
ple to learn to relate to warmth, and 
personal growth, and all the things 
that make Connection a beautiful 
place." 


14 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





'RIGHT ON 

"Do Your Own Thing" is the elev¬ 
enth commandment of the 'seventies. 
Young people everywhere are reject¬ 
ing established mores in order to live 
their own lifestyles. One campus 
group, The Freedom Conspiracy, pro¬ 
claims that no one can do his own 
thing until the apparatus of the state is 
dismantled and true laissez-faire capi¬ 
talism prevails. 

Stan Lehr '71 and Lou Rossetto 
'71, roommates and founders of the 
Conspiracy — which boasts about 30 
members — cheerfully admit that what 
they seek is right-wing propelled anar¬ 
chy. They want nothing less than an 
end to all government control of in¬ 
stitutions and people. Secular laws 
would vanish, except insofar as indi¬ 
viduals might band together and freely 
agree to abide by one or more of 
them. Lou Rossetto explains, "The 
only viable human interaction is based 
on mutual benefit." In Rossetto's ideal 
society, "People who want laws will 
subscribe to them and pay for them. 
Law enforcement will exist outside 
states as it really always has. People 
will hire private police agencies to 
protect them." 

Lehr and Rossetto split from the 
Columbia Conservative Union last 
year to start The Freedom Conspiracy. 


The Conservative Union is now de¬ 
funct and College political conserva¬ 
tives who wish to align with others 
must join either Young Republicans 
or the Conspiracy. A few students be¬ 
long to both, as does Rossetto, who 
is president of Young Republicans. 
Shades of political opinion in each 
group vary widely, although more 
Conspiracy members favor anarchy 
than do Young Republicans. Both 
clubs endorsed James Buckley, the 
Conservative party candidate, in his 
successful bid to become United 
States senator from New York. 

Lehr and Rossetto worked hard 
for Buckley because they felt his elec¬ 
tion would be interpreted as a repudi¬ 
ation of current liberal views. They 
did not think, however, that the can¬ 
didate or many of his followers truly 
represented their own ideas. Accord¬ 
ing to Lehr, many Buckley supporters, 
including the Young Americans for 
Freedom, are "flag-waving reaction¬ 
aries, nationalist and traditionalist." 
Rossetto likewise objects to such peo¬ 
ple because "they want to preserve 
America, which in fact means preserv¬ 
ing liberal institutions." 

After the election, both youngmen 
were invited by The New York Times 
Magazine to explain their views in 
print. They hope their article, which 
ran last January, convinced readers that 


all government is obnoxious, that ed¬ 
ucation should be privately financed, 
that pollution is largely due to govern¬ 
ment control, and that racism would 
disappear in a free marketplace. Both 
are against all social legislation and 
any form of taxation including taxes on 
inherited wealth, although Lehr re¬ 
luctantly allows that "very limited 
taxation might be needed to provide 
for national defense." 

Interestingly, Lehr and Rossetto 
come from strikingly different polit¬ 
ical backgrounds. Lehr's father is em¬ 
ployed by New York State in person¬ 
nel work and the family lives in Brook¬ 
lyn. "My parents would vote for al¬ 
most anyone who ran on the Demo¬ 
cratic line," reports Stan. 

Rossetto hails from Great Neck, 
Long Island and his father is vice- 
president of an engineering firm. Lou 
describes his father as "a conservative 
Republican." 

Both Lou and Stan are willing to 
work within the system for the time 
being since "revolution coerces 
people." Stan Lehr concedes, how¬ 
ever, that "sometimes I agree with the 
means of the radical left although I 
don't support its goals. Its feeling for 
local control is based on a system of 
national priorities." 

Next fall, anarchists Rossetto and 
Lehr plan to enter law school. 



AROUND THE QUADS 


15 
















REVOLVING 

DOOR 

In February, Associate Dean for 
Student affairs William Stuart forsook 
Columbia for N.Y.U., after one of the 
longest tenures in the Deans' Of¬ 
fice-all of one and a half years. 
Remaining behind will be Dean of 
Freshmen Harry Coleman, the grand 
old man of deans with a four-year 
service record, and a supporting cast 
of neophytes called assistant deans 
and associate deans. Of late, it has 
been Dean Coleman's task each fall 
to greet the new crop of incoming 
freshmen and the equally fresh flock 
of incoming administrators. 

The dean situation, originally up¬ 
set by a major shakeup following the 
disturbances of 1968, has been ag¬ 
gravated each succeeding year by 
constant changes of personnel, so 
that now a favorite fall pursuit of un¬ 
dergraduates is "Name that Dean." 
One ex-administrator attributes the 
large turnover to the fact that the 
deans leave for "better jobs with 
more responsibility, freedom to im¬ 
plement programs, and better pay." 

Although a possible solution is 
a revolving door on the Deans' Of¬ 
fice, Carl Hovde, the Dean of 
deans, has proposed instead a plan 
which would combine the offices of 
Associate Dean for Student Affairs 
and Asspciate Dean for Academic 
Affairs into one position: Executive 
or Vice Dean. 

The advantages of such a system, 
besides the shorter and easier to say 
title, are that the administration 
would become streamlined and more 
efficient, as well as less expensive. 
The assistant deans of necessity 
would bear more responsibility, and 
perhaps the assistant deanships 
would then be more attractive. 

If the new system were imple¬ 
mented, now would be the ideal time 
to fill the vacuum created by the 
exits of Stuart and Associate Dean 
for Academic Affairs Daniel Leab, 
who took a leave of absence at the 
end of the fall semester. However, 
the plan is only as promising as the 
man who fills the post of Vice Dean, 
who would have to discharge single- 
handedly many of the tasks previously 
carried out by two men. 


PROPOSING 
AND DISPOSING 

In a climactic (or perhaps anti- 
climactic) meeting last October, the 
Columbia College faculty defeated 
overwhelmingly a proposal to create 
alternatives to the CC and Humanities 
requirements. 

The proposal had been one of the 
more controversial recommendations 
submitted last Spring by the Commit¬ 
tee on Educational Policy (CEP), 
chaired by Professor of Russian Rob¬ 
ert L. Belknap. 

Its defeat had been a foregone 
conclusion since the preceding day, 
when it was rejected by the Commit¬ 
tee on Instruction, with Dean Carl F. 
Hovde the lone dissenter. Hovde had 
been an ex officio member of the 
CEP. 

The Belknap Committee had sug¬ 
gested that freshmen be permitted to 
choose among three programs: a tra¬ 
ditional CC-Humanities package; a 
regular four-point course in one of 
these two subjects and a six-point 
seminar in the other; or a 10-point 
seminar, taught by two faculty mem¬ 
bers, in place of both. Students elect¬ 
ing either the second or third alter¬ 
native would not have had to take 
English composition. The third recom¬ 
mendation, which provoked a great 


deal of discussion last year, was first 
put forward by Professor of English 
Quentin Anderson. 

The CEP plan was vigorously at¬ 
tacked by the CC and Humanities 
staffs. One of their objections, voiced 
by other faculty members as well, was 
that the creation of new options 
would tend of itself to make the es¬ 
tablished courses seem less desirable. 
Another consideration which weighed 
heavily with the faculty was that the 
CC staff had instituted substantial 
changes of its own. The common 
reading list has been done away with, 
except for a few basic materials—the 
purpose being, as one staff member 
put it, "to enable each instructor to 
concentrate on his strengths." 

At a subsequent meeting, the fac¬ 
ulty defeated another Belknap Com¬ 
mittee proposal: to permit sopho¬ 
mores to fulfill their second-year 
Humanities requirement with a se¬ 
mester of either art or music. The 
present full-year requirement, con¬ 
sisting of a semester's course in each 
subject, was allowed to stand. 

However, other important CEP 
recommendations were adopted, 
though sometimes in modified form. 
These include: 

• A two-semester distribution re¬ 
quirement in the social sciences, in 
place of CC B. (The CEP had called 
for a three-semester sequence.) 


16 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





• A three-point freshman English 
seminar, concentrating on a small 
number of literary works, to replace 
the English A freshman composition 
course. The seminar is modeled after 
the existing Freshman English honors 
course, likewise designed by Prof. 
Anderson. 

• The reduction of the two-year 
math-science requirement to a single 
year of natural science. Students will 
be able to satisfy the new require¬ 
ment with almost any of the introduc¬ 
tory science courses now available, ex¬ 
cept for "poet's courses" intended 
specially for liberal arts majors. 

• The creation of an "interde¬ 
partment" to administer the general 
education program in the lower Col¬ 
lege. The "interdepartment," known 
officially as the Committee on General 
Education, will oversee the syllabus of 
each of the courses under its jurisdic¬ 
tion: CC, Humanities A and B, Fresh¬ 
man English and Oriental Civilization. 
Eventually, it is hoped, it will obtain 
its own budget, and thus acquire the 
means of attracting senior faculty 
members to its sections. The power 
of the purse, of course, is not the fac¬ 
ulty's to bestow. "We've just created 
the receptacle," one professor ex¬ 
plained. "Someone else will have to 
fill it." 

Both the Belknap Committee and 
the faculty left the foreign language 
requirement essentially unchanged. 
Students are expected to demonstrate 
"reasonable proficiency" in a lan¬ 
guage by the end of the sophomore 
year. 

In view of the faculty's mixed re¬ 
actions to its specific recommenda¬ 
tions, does Prof. Belknap consider his 
committee a failure? He replies: "One 
of our purposes was to get an educa¬ 
tional debate going, which we obvi¬ 
ously did. Another was to strengthen 
the general education program. In the 
end, the faculty's endorsement of that 
program was much closer to our own 
than many of them realized. In the 
process of arriving at its conclusions, 
the faculty experienced what our 
student-faculty committee had expe¬ 
rienced: the kind of re-thinking which 
should produce a reasoned, active 
commitment to the programs they 
wish to preserve." 


RICHARD 

HOFSTADTER 

In times of financial crisis, it's 
easy to forget that a university's real 
wealth is its faculty. This fact was 
brought home painfully to the Co¬ 
lumbia community last October, when 
Richard Hofstadter, one of its out¬ 
standing historians, died of leukemia. 

Hofstadter, 54, graduated from 
the University of Buffalo, then came to 
Columbia for his M.A. and Ph.D. After 
teaching briefly at Brooklyn College, 
City College and the University of 
Maryland, he returned to Columbia in 
1946 and remained here until his 
death. He assumed the DeWitt Clin¬ 
ton chair in 1959. 

Of his 13 books, several were 
best-sellers, and two of them—The Age 
of Reform and Anti-lntellectualism in 


American Life —won Pulitzer Prizes. As 
many of their titles demonstrate, Hof¬ 
stadter was especially interested in 
manifestations of political paranoia, 
and advanced the thesis—challenged 
by some fellow-historians—that popu¬ 
lism in this country has been an anti¬ 
intellectual, anti-libertarian phenome¬ 
non. 

A Richard Hofstadter Memorial 
Room will be established in the 
Burgess-Carpenter wing of Butler Li¬ 
brary, and will include some 5,000 
books from the late historian's per¬ 
sonal collection, donated by his 
widow. It will also contain other vol¬ 
umes on American history and the 
social sciences, and a special section 
devoted to the late historian's own 
writings. 

Letters are being sent to 1,000 of 
his friends, associates and former stu¬ 
dents asking for funds to redecorate 
and refurnish the area. Q 

HISTORIAN: Professor Richard Hofstadter, 
who died last October. 



AROUND THE QUADS 


17 






NO ROOM AT 
THE BOTTOM: 


THE 

CRISIS 

IN 

JOBS 

by llene Barth 


One despondent 1970 
graduate of the College 
emptied his bank account 
and flew to Europe last 
October. Behind him were 
four fruitless months of 
searching for a responsible 
first job in journalism. 

A 1967 Columbia alumnus 
is presently enrolled in a 
science doctoral program. 
Worried about the job 
shortage in his field, he is 
applying to medical schools. 

A 1968 graduate does odd 
jobs in the San Francisco 
Bay area. He has worked for 
short periods of time as a 
truck driver, warehouse 
clerk, and interviewer for a 
research company. For the 
most part he takes what he 
can get, but he steers clear 
of career positions because 
he believes "people in elitist 
jobs become dysfunctional, 
disconnected from what is 
really happening in society." 

A College senior surprised 
all his friends by abruptly 
changing his career plans in 
December. He withdrew 
applications for graduate 
study in English, and instead 
applied to law schools. His 
motive was to do something 
"to tangibly help people." 
He would like to specialize 
in poverty law. 


18 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





HUNTING SEASON: Student glances hopefully at 
job notices on Placement Office bulletin 
board in Dodge Hall. 


The career aspirations of these four young men 
have all been profoundly affected by either their 
socio-political beliefs or the hard realities of the cur¬ 
rent economic recession. In formulating their plans, 
recent graduates and College seniors are giving 
ample attention to the first consideration. Some 
have been caught by surprise by the second. 

Twenty years ago economist Seymour Harris 
warned that by the middle 'sixties there would be a 
surplus of college graduates on the job market. The 
first sign, he said, would be an overabundance of 
teachers. The Department of Labor reported such an 
overabundance in September 1969. Later reports in¬ 
dicated an excess of professional personnel in many 
other areas. Men and women with recent doctorates, 
particularly in the sciences, are among those hard hit 
by unemployment. 

The people who offer career guidance at Co¬ 
lumbia and other Ivy League schools differ in in¬ 
terpreting the situation. Some are confident that job¬ 
less Ph.D.s are a temporary symptom of the 
recession, and will disappear with a small upswing in 
the economy, or with the expansion of universities in 


this decade. The less optimistic see them as harbin¬ 
gers of a worse crisis to come, as the nation's schools 
continue to produce more specialists than industry 
and academe can absorb. 

Those who forecast the rapid expansion of insti¬ 
tutions of higher learning base their prediction on the 
growing popularity of (or pressure for) open-admis¬ 
sions policies such as the City University of New 
York introduced this year. The C.U.N.Y. system now 
guarantees a place in one of its divisions to every 
city high school graduate. 

Others either deny that expansion is imminent 
(they point to the state of the economy, the rising 
costs of higher education, and the deficits incurred 
by major universities) or reason that such expansion 
would ultimately just reinforce a top-heavy spiral. 

Columbia students preparing for, and recent 
alumni already in, doctoral programs are equally 
divided. While there is no mass exodus, at least a few 
alumni have left graduate school, citing fear of un¬ 
employment; and a steady stream of College seniors 
is turning away from graduate study and heading for 
the professional schools instead. 


NO ROOM AT THE BOTTOM 


19 












KNOW THYSELF: Placement officer 

Richard Cummere tries to help applicants discover 

what they really want to do. 


Those newly crowned Phi.D's 
were not the only ones who had dif¬ 
ficulty finding jobs in 1970. Young 
men, ready to climb the career ladder 
in a wide spectrum of fields, had 
trouble locating a first rung. And their 
plight may not be alleviated by an 
upswing in the economy. Whatever 
opportunities the move to universal 
college education may offer those 
with doctorates, there will remain a 
surplus of B.A.s. In fact, the post-war 
baby explosion and the large numbers 
of college graduates during the last 
decade created a talent surplus even 
in the booming market of the mid-'six- 
ties. Until 1969, however, Columbia 


College job seekers did not feel this 
pressure, and indeed were usually 
able to attract several job offers. Col¬ 
lege educated women, however, were 
often forced to accept clerical posi¬ 
tions, and as Associate Dean of Facul¬ 
ties Ivar Berg concluded in his monu¬ 
mental study, Education and Jobs: 
The Great Training Robbery, many 
male graduates found themselves in 
positions which required a B.A., but 
which in truth could have been filled 
by men who lacked the sheepskin 
passport. 

Times have changed —even for 
Columbia men. In today's market, ac¬ 
cording to Richard Gummere, Assist¬ 


ant Director of University Placement 
and Career Services, "a distressing 
number of Columbia graduates had 
trouble finding responsible jobs. The 
classes of 1969 and 1970 went to see 
the college relations officers in busi¬ 
ness corporations, publishing houses, 
and government and found there 
were no openings. Many sought jobs 
which came easily to '67 and '68 grad¬ 
uates." 

The problem is not that there are 
no jobs, but that there are very few 
of the types of jobs many Columbia 
men want. Gummere relates that two- 
thirds of those who seek his assist¬ 
ance "prefer service jobs, jobs in 


20 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 












which they can directly help disad¬ 
vantaged people, or positions dealing 
with consumer protection or environ¬ 
mental improvement. There have 
never been many of those jobs, and 
a lot ceased to exist following govern¬ 
ment cut-backs of funds for specific 
programs in those areas." 

Placement officers at other 
schools have also noted the clamor 
for ecology-related and public service 
positions among young men and 
women who articulate distaste for the 
fields of manufacturing and finance. 
"Aspirations have changed," declares 
New York University placement direc¬ 
tor John Buckey. "The Peace Corps 


was big three years ago. Now every 
day is Earth Day. Only a few are in¬ 
terested in business or banking." 

The experience of Hope Brothers, 
who heads Brown's placement serv¬ 
ices, is similar. "Most students want 
jobs involving social community ac¬ 
tion," she reports. 

Columbia's Gummere, however, 
noted one service area which has de¬ 
creased in popularity this year: ele¬ 
mentary and secondary school teach¬ 
ing. "Two and three years ago there 
was a stampede of Columbia College 
graduates into teaching in order to 
avoid the draft. Now that occupa¬ 
tional deferments have been elim¬ 


inated, teaching is much less attrac¬ 
tive." 

No one knows just how many 
Columbia men serve in the armed 
forces. Of 115 respondents to a ques¬ 
tionnaire sent to the Class of '68, 20 
per cent indicated they were on reg¬ 
ular or Reserve duty. This figure may 
be high. It is generally conceded that 
anyone who really wants to avoid the 
military net can do so, often by prov¬ 
ing a legitimate (though frequently 
minor) disqualifying physical ailment. 
Today's seniors are usually well 
enough informed to deal in a sophis¬ 
ticated way with their local draft 
boards, and many make career plans 

21 


NO ROOM AT THE BOTTOM 










on the accurate assumption that they 
won't be called. The members of the 
Class of 1968 may have been more 
naive (it's hard to believe they were 
more willing) or the sample who an¬ 
swered the questionnaire might have 
included a disproportionate number 
of men in uniform. 

Once a man solves his draft prob¬ 
lem, placement officer Gummere is, 
in most cases, confident that he can 
eventually land the job he desires. 
Gummere insists that a job seeker 
analyze himself rigorously to find out 
what he really enjoys and wants, and 
what are his true strengths. The in¬ 


formation is then incorporated into 
an unusual and convincing resume. 
Next, Gummere counsels a candidate 
to solicit advice and assistance from 
whatever contacts he has (some of 
whom Gummere may provide) in his 
chosen field. In this manner a job 
aspirant can feel his way into his area, 
and perhaps even find a position cre¬ 
ated especially for him by a firm or 
agency whose public stance is "No 
Openings." 

The process can take time, and 
Gummere is the first to admit that 
while his "system" often works, it 
can't be guaranteed. "The educated 


proletariat is here," states the usually 
optimistic placement counselor. 
"After the recession recedes there still 
may not be jobs for all our graduates." 

Alumni who entered the "real 
world" before the money squeeze 
and found "good jobs" from which 
they have since been severed by the 
knife of recession, or who are now 
dissatisfied with those jobs, some¬ 
times call upon the placement office's 
services. It is also commonplace to 
see men who graduated two, three, 
or four years ago applying to profes¬ 
sional schools. In some cases these 
alumni were in the military, Peace 


22 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








































Corps, or Vista, or in a deliberately 
selected draft-deferrable occupation, 
and their plans always included re¬ 
turning to school. Others decided on 
further training because they found 
they needed special credentials to 
make the "real world" more suited 
to them, or to mankind. Overwhelm¬ 
ingly, such men have elected med¬ 
icine or law, and their application 
essays are full of proposed commit¬ 
ments to "public health," and to 
"poverty," "civil rights," "criminal," 
"environmental," or "consumer pro¬ 
tection" law. 

Applications to medical and law 
schools from College seniors have 
shot up also. Last year 110 Columbia 
men applied to medical school; this 
year the number rose to 140. In 1969- 
70 117 members of the graduating 
class applied to law school, plus 28 
alumni. This year it is estimated that 
40 alumni along with 150 members of 
the Class of '71 seek legal training. 

Most of the seniors submitting 
their credentials to medical schqols 
are pre-meds, reports pre-profes¬ 
sional advisor Roger Lehecka, "but 
I'm aware of at least six or seven 
physics majors and maybe 20 en¬ 
gineering students who just made the 
decision this year. Those who switched 
are afraid they won't get teaching jobs 
in science and many say they are ad¬ 
verse to jobs where they won't work 
with people. Medicine seems to them 
more human." 

Lehecka predicts that 90 per cent 
of those applying to medical colleges 
will find places, a figure which has re¬ 
mained stable over the past few years. 

Perhaps 20 to 30 of the law school 
applicants, estimates the pre-profes¬ 
sional advisor, originally planned to 
enter graduate schools but reconsid¬ 
ered in light of rumored job short¬ 
ages. Other law school aspirants, he 
says, "dfe afraid of the limitations on 
what you can do with just an A.B., 
and consider legal training a good 
foundation for many things. Very few 
of the seniors or young alumni apply¬ 
ing to law school envision joining a 
standard large law firm." 

As one man who graduated in '67 
explains, "When I left school the prac¬ 
tice of law seemed a gray tedium of 
trust and estate work and corporate 
games." He has since, like other re¬ 
turning students, become aware of 
the many "do good" areas in which 


lawyers can function. Undoubtedly, 
many of them must wish they had 
made this discovery sooner, for com¬ 
petition for places in law schools has 
become tremendously stiff. Applica¬ 
tions for fall 1970's entering class in¬ 
creased nationally by 30 per cept 
over the previous year's figure. They 
are expected to rise by almost as 
much again this year, as the Edu¬ 
cational Testing Service forecasts 
100,000 candidates for 24,000 open¬ 
ings in 125 law schools. 

Columbia students are being 
counseled not to count on acceptance 
by the four most popular law schools: 
Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Stan¬ 
ford. Nor are schools like N.Y.U. 
Penn., Berkeley, or Michigan consid¬ 
ered safe bets. It's wise advice. Col¬ 
lege records for last year show that 
Yale accepted only three of the 16 
Columbia graduates who applied, 
turning down a student with an A- 
minus average and an LSAT score 
above 700. Stanford took three out 
of nine, and NYU refused more than 
half the candidates from Columbia. 
(These figures may be slightly inac¬ 
curate, for a few men always fail to 
notify the College of late acceptances 
or rejections.) Columbia students 
haven't stopped applying to the top 
law schools, but many are also send¬ 
ing their records to schools which the 
seniors of yesteryear most likely ig¬ 
nored. "Any Columbia graduate who 
really wants to go to law school can," 
says Lehecka, "but he may have to 
dig." 

Ivy League law school admissions 
directors agree that acceptance stand¬ 
ards have become increasingly pro¬ 
hibitive. For example, Peter Bent, an 
admissions officer at Columbia Law, 
anticipates 4000 candidates for an en¬ 
tering class of 300—and 75 or more of 
those places may be filled by return¬ 
ing army veterans. The median LSAT 
score for first term students this year 
is 670 and the median grade point 
average, 3.35 on a four-point scale. 

Prospects are even dimmer at 
Yale, where the median LSAT is al¬ 
ready over 700 and 3000 applications 
are expected for 165 places. Prof. 
Cyde W. Summers, chairman of the 
law school admissions committee, is 
certain that "many of those accepted 
four or five years ago couldn't make 
it today." 

Both he and Bent attribute the 


dramatic increase in applicants to the 
post-war baby boom, and sizable 
numbers of applications from women, 
minority group students, and people 
who have been out in the world a 
few years. Summers adds that Yale is 
also receiving a good many applica¬ 
tions from "people who might have 
gone to grad schools but now want a 
more flexible education." Most candi¬ 
dates, according to Summers, "ex¬ 
press a preference for poverty, public 
interest, or urban law." 

The desire to enter a socially use¬ 
ful career seems pervasive and is cer¬ 
tainly shared by a majority of those 
who walk through the portals of the 
career services office or apply to law 
school. Not all, however, aspire to re¬ 
make the world. Placement counselor 
Gummere is not surprised to meet 
seniors "who just want to do their 
own thing: meditate, tend bar, or sub¬ 
sistence-farm" in some quiet self- 
made Utopia. He also encounters stu¬ 
dents and young alumni who seek 
establishment careers for all the tradi¬ 
tional reasons. In the latter group are 
late 'sixties graduates who trod a tried 
and true route from the beginning, 
while others "verbalized an anti¬ 
establishment ethos but came back 
two years later looking for a good 
straight job." 

And one issue of Newsletter, pub¬ 
lished by the Office of University 
Placement and Career Services, dis¬ 
cussed alternative careers and salaries 
with the comment, "Excuse the men¬ 
tion of money: Even some of our 
most revolutionary clientele ask about 
it." 

Recommended in the paper were 
the occupations of blacksmith (typical 
annual income, $30,000), pipeline 
welder, community organizer and city 
planner. 

A search for recent graduates of 
the College whose career choices or 
problems exemplify modern trends 
didn't disclose any blacksmiths, but 
did turn up one lion-tamer, one self- 
proclaimed "vagrant and mountain 
climber," one fulltime crusader for 
homosexual rights, and one entrepre¬ 
neur who makes his fortune in South 
America manufacturing children's 
clothes out of the wasted corners of 
contour bedsheets. None of these 
could be reached for comment, but in 
the following pages eight other young 
alumni speak for themselves. 


NO ROOM AT THE BOTTOM 


23 






Lloyd Lochra '70 ... Taxi Driver 

"I'm driving a cab because I need 
the money — and I usually clear be¬ 
tween $175 and $220 a week." 

Lloyd drove a taxi part-time in his 
senior year to help pay for his college 
expenses. A political science major, 
he couldn't find a "challenging prob¬ 
lem-solving job," and so decided to 
work full-time at night driving a taxi 
while he continued to seek a more 
promising career by day. 

Lochra has been held up twice 
while in his cab, once with a knife, 
and once by gunpoint. "Naturally, 
I'm scared," Lochra admits. "I need 
a safer line of work. And beyond that, 
I don't want to spend any more time 
than I have to doing work that isn't 
interesting or beneficial to me." 

Originally, Lloyd hoped to join 
the Foreign Service, and while he was 
attending Columbia he took a leave 
of absence to study at Uppsala Uni¬ 
versity in Sweden. "I met quite a few 
diplomats there and found them un¬ 



LOCHRA: needs the money. 


impressive men working at boring 
jobs," grimaces Lochra, "so, naturally 
I changed my mind. 

"What I really enjoy is wheeling 
and dealing, and I'd love to be a re¬ 
sponsible assistant to an entrepreneur. 
I guess that's a luxury job in an eco¬ 


nomy like this." 

Lochra is from Greensburg, Penn¬ 
sylvania where his father is a division 
manager in a Sears Roebuck store. "I 
really don't have many contacts in 
New York"; concludes Lloyd. "I have 
to depend on myself." 


Chris Colby '68 ... Peace Corpsman 
and Television Crewman 

Chris came to Columbia as ah 
economics major, pointing toward a 
career in business. ("That's what my 
father does, and that was all I knew.") 
By his junior year he had switched to 
sociology and psychology. When he 
graduated, he joined the Peace Corps 
and was stationed in Senegal. 

"I planted trees and dug wells," 
he recalls. He says of his experience 
there: "It certainly exposed a lot of 
white liberal cliches. The idea that 
we'd gotten ahead of them on the 
'progress continuum' was all wrong. 
They showed me more than I showed 
them." 

He completed his service last Au¬ 
gust. Blessed with a high lottery num¬ 
ber, he returned to his native Indiana, 
where he taught school occasionally 
and devoted most of his time to his 
hobby, photography. Early this winter, 
as a result of a chance meeting in New 
York, he signed on with an Italian 
television team. "Sometimes I helped 
set up interviews," says Chris. "But 
mostly I hauled equipment or drove 
people around." 

The assignment ended in Febru¬ 
ary. What next? "I don't know. Some 



COLBY: lives for the moment. 


friends plan to move to Vancouver 
and buy cheap land. I may go in with 
them. 

"Perhaps I can find work there 
with French T.V. (he speaks French 
fluently), but I'd want something more 
creative than my last job. 

"Right now, I live for the mo¬ 
ment." He defines moment, he ex¬ 
plains, "not as the passage of suns or 
moons, but as an intense commitment 
to what I'm doing. I may have long- 


range plans some day, but not now. 

"I'm not sure that people are real¬ 
ly unhappy in 'ubiquitous suburbia.' 
It's fine for someone whose main con¬ 
cern is supplying his family with basic 
needs. What I object to is that one 
loses perspective, of one's work and 
of what one is creating, and thinks 
only of the paycheck. 

"I may go to law school if I be¬ 
come frustrated. But I'm not frustrated 
yet." 




24 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



Robert Kayne '68 ... Elementary 
School Teacher 

"This is my third year teaching 
school, and I think I would have 
chosen the field regardless of the 
draft. If the army hadn't been hang¬ 
ing over me, however, I would prob¬ 
ably have gone to graduate school 
and gotten my masters degree first." 

Bob, the son of a salesman, 
teaches a third grade class in Queens, 
New York, his home borough. His 
students are all either black or Puerto 
Rican, and the school where he 
teaches has been designated a More 
Effective School (MES), which means 
that it receives additional federal 
funds for staffing. His 19 pupils are 
heterogeneously grouped, which is 
to say they represent different levels 
of ability and achievement. 

"Each child is supposed to have 
his own program and work at his own 
pace," explains Bob. "The hope is 
that the duller children will learn 
from the brighter children. There has 
been some slight improvement in 
reading scores but I'm not sure the 
scheme really works. Teachers, myself 



KAYNE: tries to be effective. 


included, who have been standardly 
educated don't always know how to 
give individualized instruction, and 
not just busywork. Teachers should be 
taught how to teach." 

This is the first year Kayne has 
really felt confident in the classroom. 
"It's difficult to be in an experimental 
period but I think, this year, I am 


teaching something and that it will 
work out in the long run. I try hard 
to be effective." 

Bob commutes to Teachers Col¬ 
lege evenings to study educational 
psychology. "Eventually, I'd like to 
become a school psychologist. I don't 
want to be a classroom teacher when 
I'm forty . .. it's a dead end." 



Joel Ouellet '69 ... Stockbroker 

Joel has held a variety of jobs 
since he graduated from the College 
with a major in art history. He has 
worked in a shipyard ("mostly sleep¬ 
ing"), painted abstract oils in Cali¬ 
fornia, run an art gallery on Cape Cod, 
and spent five months on active duty 
in the National Guard in Jackson, 
South Carolina, where he devoted his 
off-duty hours to writing for an under¬ 
ground newspaper aimed at creating 
a peace movement in the military. 

Last May he decided to become a 
stockbroker, "because I wanted to 
make money and felt I could handle 
it." 

His decision came at a time when 
brokerage firms were not hiring and 
"it was common knowledge in the 
trade that young brokers were starv¬ 
ing." 

Joel approached 40 firms, re¬ 
ceived three responses, and took the 
first solid offer. His company, Harris- 
Upham, put him through a six-month 
training period which he completed 
last December. 


Ouellet, who lives in a downtown 
artsy loft, does not really fit the broker 
image. His father works for the tele¬ 
phone company in Massachusetts, 
and as the oldest of eight children he 
was a scholarship student at Colum¬ 
bia. "I lived on $25.89 per week for 
everything. I certainly wasn't hired 


for my contacts. Most of the people 
I know do not have money to invest 
in the stock market. 

"Right now I'm trying to make 
the contacts I need to win institu¬ 
tional accounts. An open-minded per¬ 
son can handle Wall Street — it's not 
the worst place to be." 


NO ROOM AT THE BOTTOM 


25 


CHARLES CHRISTIANSEN 











Christopher Goldsmith '68... 

Community Workshop 
Drama Teacher 

Chris majored in French at Co¬ 
lumbia but spent his summers teach¬ 
ing drama at children's camps, and 
worked part-time during the school 
year as a drama therapist in Harlem. 
Today he helps disadvantaged teen¬ 
agers improvise plays and dramatic 
skits at a community center, and di¬ 
rects occasional theater-events at Co¬ 
lumbia. Chris works more for love 
than for money. His annual income is 
between three and four thousand dol¬ 
lars. 

"I'm happy," theorizes Chris, 
"because I really enjoy what I do. I 
don't think there's any hope in just 
filling a job slot. Too many people 
make a distinction between what they 
do in a job and what they really do in 
their lives." 

Chris's ambitions are to have his 
own participatory drama studio and 
to start a Zen theater in New York. 



GOLDSMITH: for love, not money. 



HAMMERS: strike made him think. 


Linwood Hammers '70 . . . Counselor 
to Delinquent Boys 

Lenny, as he prefers to be called, 
runs group therapy sessions at an old 
forestry site now used as a year-round 
camp for juvenile offenders (ages IB- 
19) in Pennsylvania. Lenny had 
planned to be a dentist. "I got ac¬ 
cepted by three dental schools, but 
decided at the very end that wasn't 
what I wanted. I wanted to help 
people." 

Hammers comes from the tiny 
rural town of Aitch, Pennsylvania, 
where his father is a poultry inspector 
for the Department of Agriculture. He 
followed a pre-med course at Co¬ 
lumbia and played football for three 
years. Spring '68 turned out to be a 
watershed for him, as it was for so 
many others. 

"Before that," remembers Lenny, 
"I had a football mentality. I had to 
compete and beat everybody. I think 
I came to college trying to meet the 
expectations of people from my small 
town. It was a choice between being 
a lawyer or doctor. And before the 
riots I was a non-thinker. ... I just 
accepted that. I was part of the ma¬ 
jority coalition in the beginning, but 
the arguments of the strikers made 
me change my mind and start think¬ 


ing about myself. 

"I think I made the right decision 
in taking this job. I'm learning a lot 
here. You have to be truthful and 
consistent with these kids. Most of 
the boys are from broken homes and 
they're searching for something to 
hang on to. 

"My parents I guess, are slightly 
disappointed. They suspect Columbia 
turned me into someone they don't 
understand, and they're not keen on 
having an activist in the family. And 


some of the guys I played football 
with thought I was stupid not to go 
to d.ental school, but my closest 
friends could see that I had to do 
something I really cared about." 

Lenny intends to return to Co¬ 
lumbia next year to study psychology 
at Teachers College. He hopes to 
qualify for financial support from his 
home state in exchange for working 
for the Pennsylvania Department of 
Welfare when his studies are com¬ 
pleted. 


26 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








David Sokal '69 . . . Vista Volunteer 
And Inventor 

David, son of a Buffalo, New York 
surgeon, majored in chemistry at the 
College. Today he works with the 
Crow Indians and lives on their res¬ 
ervation near Pryor, Montana. "The 
most valuable advice I received," re¬ 
calls David, "came at the end of my 
six week Vista training period: 'Don't 
try to present any new ideas until 
your neighbors have gotten to know 
you. If you're accepted as a friend of 
the community you're living in, 
people will be more willing to re¬ 
spect your suggestions and accept 
your help.' " 

David feels he has been accepted 
as a friend by the Crows. In addition 
to his regular teaching duties (he in¬ 
structs adults in math, science, ac¬ 
counting and typing), he is investi¬ 
gating new sources of income for the 
tribe. He is now trying to persuade 
the Arrow Creek Co-op (the local- 
Indian association which markets 
timber) to explore the possibilities of 
producing jerky and pemmican (dried 
meat and fruit, old Indian specialties 
long known to serious campers) com¬ 
mercially. 


Stanley Adelman '67 ... Parole Officer 

Stanley grew up in Weehauken, 
New Jersey, where his father owns a 
stationery store. After graduation he 
entered a Ph.D. program in psychol¬ 
ogy at the University of Chicago, 
which he left a year later for "a draft- 
deferred job." 

As parole officer in New York 
City, Adelman says, "I can work with 
my parolees pretty much as I want to. 
These guys come out of jail and back 
to the same old environment where 
many of them became hooked on 
heroin. Most of them were busted for 
stealing to support their habits or 
pushing drugs. My job is to keep 
them from going back to the needle, 
to help find jobs for them, to en¬ 
courage them to start new lives. I try 
not to play God but sometimes I have 
to." 

Stan has had both his successes 
and failures. One of his former pa¬ 
rolees, a 37-year old ex-junkie, is now 
employed by a hospital clinic to 
counsel adolescents. But another pa- 



SOKAL: friend of the Crows. 


In his spare time Sokal works in 
his pot-bellied stove-heated cottage 
on laboratory and ecological inven¬ 
tions. He has already created a self¬ 
balancing centrifuge head, patent 
pending, and is currently perfecting 
an inexpensive device to permit verbal 


communication underwater. 

When his Vista stint is up, David 
may enter medicine. His first choice 
medical school is University of Cali¬ 
fornia, San Diego "because of its 
proximity to Scripps Institute of Ocean¬ 
ography." 



ADELMAN: sometimes plays God. 


rolee, only 28, died from a heroin 
overdose. 

Stan thinks his job has changed 
him. "A few years ago I would have 
sneered at a person who was con¬ 
tent just to be a cog in a machine and 
do his job well. This job has human¬ 
ized me. I have to see both cops and 
criminals as people and it's hard to 


stay prejudiced." 

Adelman is now awaiting an¬ 
swers from the eight law schools to 
which he has applied. "I decided I 
could be more effective as a lawyer 
in working on urban problems and 
the injustices of the system. It seems 
to me that the major battleground to¬ 
day is in the courts." Q 


NO ROOM AT THE BOTTOM 


27 










Roar Lion Roar 


JIMMY MAC 
COMES BACK 

If the writers and editors of this 
magazine meet their deadlines, and 
the printers meet theirs, you should 
be reading this about the same time 
that the Los Angeles Lakers are mak¬ 
ing their second and final appearance 
of the year at Madison Square 
Garden. 

The Los Angeles Lakers have a 
rookie forward named Jim McMillian 
whom they are paying approximately 
$300,000 dollars to play basketball. 
McMillian recently played the same 
game for Columbia. This is what hap¬ 
pened when the Lakers came to New 
York last October for McMillian's 
maiden professional effort in the 
Garden. 


On the day before the game, the 
Lakers checked into the Statler Hilton 
Hotel, but McMillian was not in his 
room. McMillian was not at his old 
apartment on 112th St., either. Maybe, 
thought this reporter, McMillian had 
returned to the friendly confines of 
University Gym. No such luck. 
"Jimmy can be pretty tough to find, 
sometimes," said Columbia freshman 
coach Peter Salzburg. 

If anyone would know where 
McMillian was, it would be Morris 
Dunlop, the equipment man in the 
basket room. Morris knows every¬ 
thing. "I don't know where he is," 
said Morris. "Jimmy can be pretty 
tough to find, sometimes. A lot of 
people make demands on his time. 
If I were you, I'd try the hotel again." 

Back downtown went this re¬ 
porter. McMillian was not there. 
Maybe he's at the Garden basketball 


office, thinks this reporter. McMillian 
is not at the Garden basketball office. 
Maybe the Lakers' public relations 
man knows where McMillian is. The 
Lakers' public relations man, it turns 
out, is not even in New York. 

A call is placed to the Columbia 
Sports Information Office. They have 
no information, but they have a 
rumor. McMillian, it is believed, will 
be at the gym to visit coach Jack 
Rohan and Morris. Back uptown goes 
this reporter. 

"I heard that he would be here," 
says Coach Rohan, "but he's not here 
now." 

"I heard that he would be here," 
says Morris, "but he's not here now." 

It is learned that Jim Gordon, 
who broadcasted Columbia basket¬ 
ball games for WKCR, might know 
where-McMillian could be. "You just 
missed him," says someone at WCKR. 


28 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 























































































"McMillian?" 

"No, Jim Gordon. He just left." 

The Columbia campus and en¬ 
virons are combed for people who 
might know where Jim McMillian is. 
They all heard that he would be back 
at the gym. 

Back to the gym goes this re¬ 
porter. And there, speaking softly 
to Morris, is Jim McMillian. Arrange¬ 
ments are made to meet in the equip¬ 
ment room the next day, a few hours 
before the game. 

At the appointed time, the 
equipment room contains your re¬ 
porter, Morris, and lot of T-shirts— 
everything the equipment room 
should contain except Jim McMillian. 
An hour later, the situation is un¬ 
changed. Morris smiles indulgently. 

"You should have spoken to him 
here yesterday when you had the 
chance. It's not that he would know¬ 
ingly stand anybody up, but there are 
so many people who want to see 
him, so many things he has to 
do ... " 

Peter Salzburg chuckles indul¬ 
gently over the telephone. "You 
should have spoken to him yester¬ 
day when you had the chance," he 
says. "Why don't you try Toni? She 
ought to know where he is." 

Toni is McMillian's girl. She 
works at the Urban Center at Avery 
Hall. Goes to all the games. Under¬ 
stands the pick and roll. The back 
door play. The combination zone 
defense. A Penn graduate. Very 
sharp. 

Toni nods indulgently. "You 
should have spoken to him yester¬ 
day . . . Did you try 112th Street?" 

"Yes. No one home." 

"I didn't think he'd be there 
anyway. I'm almost positive he'd be 
at the hotel. Why don't you go back 
there?" 

Back to the hotel goes your re¬ 
porter. And there, outside the main 
entrance, talking to his friend Rodney, 
Stands Jim McMillian. 

"Problems," says Jim McMillan# 
"Lots of problems. I had to spend 
most of the day with my lawyer." 
When one's salary is in six figures, 
one spends a good deal of time with 
one's lawyer. Rodney asks McMillian 
where his uniform is. It is at 112th St. 
Back uptown go Jim McMillian and 
this reporter. 


MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS: jim McMillian before he traded 
his Light Blue jersey for a Laker uniform. 


"I'm glad we don't come to New 
York more than twice a year," Mc¬ 
Millian says in the subway. "There is 
so much confusion when I come 
back here that it's tough to think 
about the game." 

The game is what McMillian 
must think about. He is a rookie, no 
longer a star. He must learn to ad¬ 
just to a faster and rougher style of 
play. He must learn to tolerate, for 
the first time in his life, sitting on the 
bench. And he must adapt to the fact 
that when the Lakers need a basket, 
they will look for Chamberlain and 
West, not McMillian. 

"I knew that I wasn't going to 
come into this league and score a lot 
of points right away," he says. "In a 
way that's a big relief. I don't have 
to contend with the pressure that 
I'm the one that's going to have to 
make the big play. I can learn and 


develop at my own pace." But al¬ 
though his coach tells him that even 
Jerry West was not a full-time player 
until very late in his rookie year, 
McMillian does not like sitting on the 
bench. 

"Otherwise, the life is good. So 
far I like the traveling. Los Angeles 
is a good place to live. It's much 
more low key than New York. You 
can relax lot more out there. The 
weather is warmer and you can drive 
a car without getting stuck in a traffic 
jam." 

Columbia has left an imprint on 
McMillian's life-style. "I'm fairly close 
with some of the younger players, 
but in a way I'm sort of a social out¬ 
cast. I do a lot more reading than 
most of the players. They seem to be 
more interested in women and 
money than I am. Sometimes some¬ 
one will come into my apartment 


ROAR LION ROAR 


29 





and ask me to go out, and I'll tell 
him that I'd rather stay in and finish 
a book I'm reading. Some of the 
players don't understand why I'd 
rather do that." 

"Do you think it would have 
been better if you had gone to 
UCLA, for example?" 

"What for? What would I have 
gotten out of that? A watch? I al¬ 
ready have two watches." 

Most of the 19,500 people who 
were at the Garden that night came 
to see the Knicks play Los Angeles. 
But the Spectator sports editor, Jim 
Gordon, Bill Steinman of the Co¬ 
lumbia Sports Information Office, 
your reporter and about 20 of Mc- 
MiIlian's family and friends came to 
see something else. A few minutes 
into the second quarter they saw it. 

McMillian came off the bench, 
ran Cazzie Russell into a pick, took 
a pass and scored a layup. Then he 
hit some jump shots, stole a pass, 
grabbed some rebounds, hit the open 
man with passes and started a couple 
of fast breaks. The Knicks took Russell 
off McMillian and replaced him with 
Dave DeBusschere, their best defen¬ 
sive forward. By the end of the first 
half McMillian had scored 11 points 
in less than one quarter. 

He got into the game again in 
the fourth quarter. But this time he 
was guarded far more closely and did 
not score. Still, it had been an im¬ 
pressive debut. DeBusschere and 
Laker teammate Happy Hairston had 
only good things to say about Mc- 
Mi I Man's performance and his po¬ 
tential. 

"I wasn't too happy," McMillian 
said in the locker room after the 
game. "First of all, we lost; and I 
still have a way to go learning the 
team defense, and how much con¬ 
tact I can get away with." Wilt Cham¬ 
berlain, noticing the reporters sur¬ 
rounding McMillian, made it a point 
to stop by his locker and say, loud 
enough for the writers to hear, "Nice 
game, Jim." 

Later, when McMillian was stand¬ 
ing outside the Statler Hilton with 
some friends, a Columbia alumnus 
went up to him and gave him a book. 
"I don't know what you would have 
gotten had you gone to another 
school," he said. "But from Columbia 
people, you get books." 


AFTER THE FALL 

Only the soccer team and the 
cross country squad performed up to 
expectations during the 1970 fall 
sports season. For the harriers that 
meant a 2-9 record —a decided im¬ 
provement over the past four years, 
when they won no meets at all. For 
the soccer team, it meant a strong 
showing in the Ivy League and a bid 
to the NCAA tournament. Columbia 
got to the second round before being 
eliminated by Hartwick, a national 
power. 

But the football teams—all three 
of them—had disappointing records. 
The lightweights and freshmen each 
went 0-6. The varsity, after winning 
three of its first five games, lost its 
last four, and wound up sharing the 
Ivy League cellar with Brown. Two 
freshmen, Evan Forde and Mike 
Peluso, who were counted on for 
strong performances, did not play a 
single minute. Family problems forced 
Peluso to transfer to a school nearer 
to his home, while Forde, the fastest 
freshman in the school, sustained a 
leg injury before the start of the sea¬ 
son. For one reason or another, most 
of lightweight coach Harvey Silver's 
quality players decided not to go out 
for the team and the results were not 
surprising. The closest game the Cubs 
were involved in was a 12-0 loss to 
Princeton. 


After its best start in years, the 
varsity just collapsed midway during 
the season. The turning point was the 
Cornell game, when the Lions took 
an early lead and then blew it. A rout 
by Dartmouth, which was expected, 
was followed by losses to Penn and 
Brown, which were not. 

Most of the defeats at least 
were close—a welcome contrast to 
other recent campaigns. The Dart¬ 
mouth debacle was the only real 
humiliation Columbia endured. 

Injuries to starting defensive play¬ 
ers were a major factor in the team's 
decline. There were just not enough 
adequate replacements on the second 
and third units. The erratic perform¬ 
ances of sophomore quarterback Don 
Jackson also hurt. There were games 
in which Jackson looked great, and 
there were some in which he looked 
considerably less than that. He threw 
far too many interceptions (20) even 
for a sophomore, and his judgment 
on option plays was often faulty. But 
Jackson will improve. His talent is 
undeniable, and so is his determina¬ 
tion to eliminate his mistakes. Im¬ 
mediately after the season ended, 
Jackson got a film splicer—and put to¬ 
gether a movie with nothing on it but 
the interceptions he threw. When he 
is not studying for exams, he is study¬ 
ing that film. Such a disciplined con¬ 
frontation with reality will not go un¬ 
rewarded. 


BREAKTHROUGH: Quarterback Don Jackson eludes Penn 
defender. Quakers won anyway, 21-14. 



30 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


MANNY WARMAN 






MIRACLE ON 
119TH STREET? 

McMillian and Dotson had gradu¬ 
ated. Bob Griffin dropped out of 
school. Leon Williams, after only two 
games, broke his foot. The team had 
no superstars; it was neither very 
strong nor very tall. Why then, you 
may well ask, did the Columbia varsity 
five perform with such startling and 
satisfying efficiency through the first 
half of its season (winning nine of its 
first 13 games)? 

In the first instance, the team was 
not nearly so incompetent as many 
veteran observers of the local sports 
scene had led themselves and others 
to believe. Larry Gordon (a 6-5 senior 
guard), the team's leading scorer, and 
Bob Gailus (a 6-7 senior forward) were 
not exceptionally aggressive, but they 
did have exceptional jump shots from 
inside 20 feet of the basket. Gordon 
scored more than 25 points in each-of 
the Lions' first three league games. 
Gailus got 21 in the Garden as Co¬ 
lumbia routed NYU. 

Jim Boggan ( 6-4 swingman) was 
not much on shotmaking, but he 
played excellent defense. Man-to¬ 
man, he climbs into his opponent's 
uniform and stays there with him. un¬ 
til the timekeeper says that the game 
is over. His second-half job on super¬ 
shooter Willie Humes in Columbia's 
win over Idaho State on the West 
Coast was typical. As a wingman in 
Columbians 3-2 zone, Boggan puts 
such pressure on the man with the 
ball that he often finds himself shoot¬ 
ing or passing it off his nose. That was 
one of the big reasons why Columbia 
had such an easy time defeating 
Georgetown. 

Ed Monks (a 6-2 senior guard) is 
quiet, modest and not one of the 
world's great ballhandlers. But.you will 
be very sorry if, in a close game, you 
foul him or give him room inside 15 
feet. Ask the players at Brown or 
Idaho State. Then there were Bob 
Evans and Foley Jones (6-3 and 6-6, 
forward and center, sophomore and 
sophomore, respectively). Evans oc¬ 
casionally forgot the plays on offense 
and, every once in a while, did not 
get down court quickly enough on 
defense. But he was tough under the 
backboards and very good on the 



CONCENTRATION: Senior Larry Gordon. 


drives and short jump shots. And in 
the words of the noted aeronautical 
metaphysician Charles Dillon Stengel, 
he could jump over buildings. Last 
year, as a freshman, Jones used to miss 
four-foot jump shots and, heaven for- 
fend, lay-ups. He doesn't do that any 
more. He's become the team's most 
effective rebounder, and he smashes 
opponents shots all over the court. 

Unfortunately, Evans was** de¬ 
clared academically ineligible after 
the semester break, but Williams' un¬ 
expectedly quick recovery should 
offset his departure. 

Senior guard and captain Elliot 
Wolfe was the quintessential New 
York City backcourtman. Elliot played 
tough defense. Elliot broke the full- 
court press. Elliot engineered the fast 
break. And best of all, Elliot pene¬ 
trated. Coaches and grizzled veterans 
of the urban playground scene get 
positively dewey-eyed over guards 
who penetrate. Penetration means 
that Elliot fakes left and goes right (or 


vice versa), beats his man, draws some 
other defenders to him as he ap¬ 
proaches the basket. Then he goes 
into the air, throws some head fakes, 
some eye fakes, some arm fakes, a few 
sneaker fakes and drops the ball off to 
a teammate for an easy lay-up. Elliot 
ha$ all of Columbia's assist records, 
and now he shoots also. Against 
< Georgetown he missed one shot. 
^ Against San Jose he didn't miss any. 

^ In the first instance, there was 
| talent. In the second instance there 
5 were brains—those belonging to coach 
Jack Rohan. Before the McMiljian- 
Dotson Era (check out the long- 
playing album of the same name), 
Rohan made his living getting fine per¬ 
formances out of less than overwhelm¬ 
ing material. He is at it again. He 
teaches, demands and gets tight team 
defense. He teaches, demands and 
gets intelligent, patient offense. If you 
force a shot, you sit on the bench. For 
the first half of the season, the Lions 
forced very few and shot better than 
50 percent from the field. Against 
Georgetown, they shot nearly 60 per¬ 
cent. 

As a result, Columbia had virtually 
assured itself a .500 season by the 
mid-year examination break, some¬ 
thing very few would have granted it 
last November. There was even specu¬ 
lation that it would challenge Penn 
for the league title, or, failing that, 
take second place and a bid to the 
NIT. But the Lions still had the bulk 
of the Ivy schedule ahead of them, 
and the challenge of physically su¬ 
perior teams from Dartmouth, Har¬ 
vard, Princeton and Penn. 


1970-1971 BASKETBALL-FINAL 


81 

City College . 

.. 55 

80 Georgetown . 

. 68 

80 

New York University .. 

. . 65 

*56 Cornell . 

. 48 

61 

Rutgers . 

. . 74 

*53 

Princeton ... . 

. 50 

71 

Penn State . 

. . 63 

*79 

Penn . 

. 92 

67 

Fordham' . 

. . 83 

*71 

Harvard . 

. 73 

■62 

Cornell .. 

. . 58 

*84 

Dartmouth . 

. 83 

73 

Memphis State . 

.. 93 

*68 

Brown . 

. 65 

71 

Idaho State . 


*92 

Yale . 

. 77 

76 

San ]ose State . 

. . 68 

*66 

Harvard . 

. 85 

73 

Stanford . 

. . 85 

*73 

Dartmouth . 

. 78 

'79 

Yale . 

. . 58 

*71 

Princeton . 

. 62 

80 

Brown . 

. . 74 

*58 

Penn . 

. 70 


*lvy League game 

Overall Record, 15-9 League Record, 9-5 (third place) 


ROAR LION ROAR 


31 



























RIGHT TRACK 

A stunning upset of Rutgers, led 
by distance runner Larry Momo, and a 
victory over Lafayette got the track 
team off to one of its best starts in 
years. That is not to say that the Lions 
will be a track power very soon, but at 
least they are not going to be laughed 
at. 

Columbia was strong in the 35- 
pound weight throw with Ron Frucht 
and Jack Girgenti. Middle distance 
man Dwayne Dahl and sprinters Joe 
Corso and Larry Lasoff also did well in 
the Lions' plodding climb to respect¬ 
ability. 


NECK AND NECK: Sprinter Joe 
Corso and N.Y.U. opponent. 



PAUSE IN THE DAY'S OCCUPATION: 
Swimmer Homer Lane. 


GOING UNDER 

Even a schedule change which 
eliminated Army, Navy, Yale, Harvard 
and Colgate could not help the Lions' 
weak swimming team. They were 
slaughtered in their first four matches, 
though in two of them they were sup¬ 
posed to have had a chance for a 
strong showing if not outright victory. 
Kings Point trounced Columbia 86-26, 
and the following week St. John's 
wrecked the Lions, 81-29. 

Homer Lane, Columbia's great 
senior sprinter, and divers Mitch Gross 
and Marty Farber were the lone per¬ 
formers expected to provide coach 
Jack Mayers with any solace. 



SABRE-RATTLER: Defending 
NCAA sabre champ Bruce Soriano. 


CUTTING UP 

As usual, Col umbia's fencing pros¬ 
pects were excellent. The sabre team 
was overwhelming. Junior Bruce Sori¬ 
ano, the defending NCAA champion, 
returned but he wasn't even expected 
to be the best man in that weapon, ac¬ 
cording to coach Lou Bankuti, the 
NCAA's 1970 coach of the year. That 
honor belonged to senior David 
Rodgers. Junior Pete Milburn and 
senior Peter Haskel were expected to 
share the number three spot. 

The Lions were also deep and 
strong at epee. Henry Knecht, a senior, 
was probably the best man. He got ex¬ 
cellent support from seniors Mark 
Haselkorn and Robin Koenig. Junior 
Dave Emery also looked promising. 

Foil was the weak position. Ban¬ 
kuti termed the prospects there "only 
fair," the big loss being the graduation 
of Tony Kestler. Juniors Bob Berger 
and Gary Pepper looked competent. 
The key, however, will be the devel¬ 
opment of sophomore Greg Gall. 
The Lions finished second in the coun¬ 
try last winter. Bankuti says that this 
team may be "a little better than that." 
That left only one other possibility, on 
which Bankuti would not elaborate. 


THE HIGH AND 
THE MIGHTY 

Coach Peter Salzburg has fielded 
the best freshman team at Columbia 
since 1966 (McMillian and Dotson 
again) &nd the tallest since 1964 (Dave 
Newm&rk, John Harms and Larry Bor- 
ger). The Lion Cubs finished the first 
half of their schedule with eight wins 
in 10 games. 

They were led by 6-9 center Dan 
Kelly, the team's best scorer and re¬ 
bounder. Kelly has quickness, strength, 
leaping ability, a good shooting touch 
and sensitive eyes. They were 
bothered by the television lights 
which were to be used in the varsity 
game against Georgetown. So Kelly 
became the first athlete in Columbia 

< history to play a game in shades. 

I The other big man with immedi- 
$ ate varsity potential is 6-8 forward 
z Charlie Lehman, a fine defensive 

< player and rebounder and a good 
shooter. Lehman comes from Hickory, 
North Carolina. "The Peyton Place of 
the South," he says happily. 

Ron Boyd, a 6-3 guard-forward, 
could turn out to be the best of the 
lot. Tremendously quick, Boyd is an 
explosive driver and looks as though 
he could become a devastating defen¬ 
sive player. But he's not there yet. 

Harold Snow (5-11), Darryl Down¬ 
ing (6-2) and John Byrnes (5-10) have 
also had their moments. 


COUNTED OUT 

Before the season started, coach 
Jerry Seckler was talking about Ivy 
League championships. Then the Lion 
varsity lost four of its first five meets 
and even a winning season seemed to 
be in doubt. Three potential starters 
quit the team, and a fourth was de¬ 
clared academically ineligible. Only 
Bob Sacavage, a 167-pound sopho¬ 
more, and co-captain Roger Campbell 
(126) did really well during the sea¬ 
son's early matches. Their support was 
inconsistent. 

The hope must now be for the 
future as Seckler waits for a powerful 
freshman group, led by 285-pound Al 
Acharer, to come out for varsity com¬ 
petition next year. 


32 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




HENRY CAREY: Can he teach a two-hand backwards dunk shot? 


CAREY ON 

Last fall, Mike Griffin resigned 
as varsity assistant basketball coach 
to take a position coaching the fresh¬ 
men at R.P.I. He was replaced by 
Henry Carey, the first full-time black 
faculty member of Columbia's Physi¬ 
cal Education department. 

"The best part about being 
here," says Carey, whose duties in¬ 
clude scouting and recruiting, "is 
that Coach Rohan and everyone else 
I've met here so far treat you 
straight. There is absolutely no con¬ 
descension." Condescension and a 
lot worse have been a large part of 
Henry Carey's life. 

Carey attended Boys High. His 
achievements there included the 
development of a two-hand back¬ 
wards dunk shot—Carey is 5-11— 
second-team All-City and the privi¬ 
lege of walking home after school 
with Connie Hawkins. Boys High in 
Bedford Stuyvesant offered an atmo¬ 
sphere conducive to long jump 
shots, wine, drugs, hanging around 
school yards and poverty. It did not 


offer college guidance, or guidance 
of any sort. But if you could play 
ball you could go to college—or so 
Carey thought. 

And with his all-city honors and 
his general diploma Carey waited for 
the offers to roll in. He waited. And 
waited. He took the best offer he 
got—a trainee position at Robert Hall. 
In 1961, 5-11 two-hand stuff shot 
artists were not in terribly great de¬ 
mand at the nation's universities. 

Carey breezed through the pro¬ 
gram and, after about a year, decided 
that he could make it through col¬ 
lege. 

"I'll never forget that look I got 
from my boss when I told him 1 was 
going to try to go to college," Carey 
says. "It was a look that said, 'Well, 
you may be smart enough to do al¬ 
right here. But no one like you is 
going to get through college.'" 

The best Carey could do with 
his background was Coffeyville Junior 
College in Kansas. He had what may 
loosely be described as a basketball 
scholarship. "You should have seen 
where we had to live—literally on the 
wrong side of the railroad tracks. 


For meals we used to have to go to 
the homes of some of the black fam¬ 
ilies that lived in the town." 

In his two years there, Carey 
helped make Coffeyville a junior col¬ 
lege basketball power. He also taught 
himself how to study well enough to 
be accepted at the University of 
Rhode Island. When he came home 
that summer he was something of a 
success in Bedford-Stuyvesant. "All 
my friends wanted me to hang out 
in the park at night, drink wine and 
party. But I realized that if I was 
going to make it at Rhode Island I 
had to do two things: study and im¬ 
prove my basketball." That summer 
Carey was in the park only to play 
ball. 

Physicajly, Rhode Island was 
mope comfortable than Coffeyville, 
but some things did not change. 

"I remember when my room- 
z mate first walked in the door and 
S saw me in the room. He couldn't 
0 believe that I was his roommate. Of 
> course, when I started to play ball, 
z he'd make a big thing about my be- 
S ing his roommate. 

"And while the administration 
was very good about the money as¬ 
pect, it was ■ very tough up there. 
They didn't help you improve your 
studying very much, and they wanted 
you to take physical education 
courses. Socially, it was terrible. You 
were completely on your own. There 
were very few black students apd 
most of them were the athletes.",; 

Still Carey graduated with a 
major in history and sociology, be¬ 
coming one of the very few products 
of Boys High basketball to get a 
bachelor's degree. He was also All- 
Yankee Conference in basketball. 

After graduation, Carey taught 
social studies at a Rhode Island high 
school and coached the varsity 
basketball team as well. Later, he 
went back to Rhode Island to start 
wprk on his masters and helped 
coach the freshman team. 

Although teaching, scouting and 
recruiting here require that Carey 
often put in a 14-hour day, he is 
finishing his masters essay. He should 
get his degree this June and when he 
does he'll be one of the very, very 
few to emerge from the Boys High 
basketball culture with an advanced 
degree. Q 


ROAR LION ROAR 


33 




A Distinguished Sports Columnist Examines the Role 
Of Intercollegiate Athletics On the Modern Campus 


By Leonard Koppett 

When I was a Columbia student, thirty years 
ago, there seemed to be a single key question 
in the air, a question that defined a viewpoint 
and could be applied in any area. It was 
emphasized, for my contemporaries, by 
Professor William Casey, but certainly no 
private property of his. It could be phrased: 

"How do things really work?" 

Today, I have virtually no contact with 
Columbia students, but I suspect there also 
exists a key question appropriate to this 
time, evidently shared by young people 
everywhere. I think this question can be 
applied just as universally, and phrased: 

"Is it worth it?" 


Both questions are now being put, with 
increasing intensity, to the subject of college 
athletics. 


And it seems obvious, at least to me, that there 
is no sensible answer to the second without a 
reasonably detailed answer to the first. 

Let's see where that leads us. 


College athletics are being re-examined, 
everywhere, for two powerful reasons. On the 
one hand, a great financial crisis has gripped all 
educational institutions, and athletics are a 
visible expense. On the other, radical changes 
in attitude—about curriculum, about social 
life, about purposes and means, about 
traditions, obligations, needs, satisfactions—are 
sweeping through the academic community; 
and these changes, inevitably, challenge or at 
least modify the premises on which existing 
athletic programs rest. 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




COLUMBIANA 



EDDIE COLLINS '07: Philadelphia Athletics 
second-baseman and Hall of Famer. 


FOR THE DEFENSE: Sportswriter Koppett 
still roots for Columbia teams. 


And both these general forces, the 
money squeeze and the new outlook, 
are partly the consequence of a great 
new circumstance: the immense and 
rapid change in the nature of the col¬ 
lege population. 

The athletic programs we are used 
to, essentially unchanged for the last 
40 or 50 years, were no one's con¬ 
scious invention. They took the shapes 
they did because they met successfully 
the needs and desires of their time. 

At first, about 100 years ago, 
school administrations were indif¬ 
ferent or hostile to any sort of organ¬ 
ized recreation for their students. It 
was the students themselves who had 
to find the time, place and equipment 
to play games, and to make arrange¬ 
ments. They would get help from 


Leonard Koppett '44 covers sports 
for the New York Times. He has 
recently authored two books :The New 
York Mets, which chronicles the 
amazing championship year of 1969, 
and Championship N.B.A. 


some alumni and some teachers or ad¬ 
ministrators acting as individuals, but 
they were really on their own. 

They were also, to a large degree, 
a one-class population (affluent) in a 
relatively small number of colleges. 
They had no movies, radio, television 
or automobiles, and little if any in¬ 
tellectual involvement with the out¬ 
side world. 

It is hard to realize, today, how 
much excitement and satisfaction 
could be gained then from a trip to a 
neighboring school to make a "big" 
game by pitting your best players 
against theirs. It could be anticipated 
and re-hashed in a way internal, 
pick-up games could not. 

But such a game required arrange¬ 
ments, and these students — sons of 
prosperous business and professional 
men in an epoch that still looked upon 
capitalism as a semi-religious virtue— 
took as much pride in organizing their 
"athletic associations" as in the games 
they made possible. 

And that's how varsity athletics 
were born. The mere fact of arranging 
systematic competition with other 
schools brought into being new 


phenomena: an increase in playing 
skills, an eager audience, continuing 
alumni interest, heightened loyalty. 

There also arose great needs for 
financing and personnel. The impor¬ 
tance of winning the game was much 
greater when the other side was an¬ 
other school and an emotional enemy 
than when students were just playing 
among themselves. Winning required 
a captain to give directions, a coach 
to teach techniques, hours of practice, 
dedicated physical conditioning. But 
winning also stimulated the interest 
of alumni, families, townspeople, and 
facilities had to be provided for spec¬ 
tators. The natural way to cover ex¬ 
penses was to charge admission, and 
once that was done, profits began to 
appear—profits to be plowed back into 
expanding and improving the activity 
itself. 

By 1900, college football was a 
firmly established feature of American 
college life. So were baseball, rowing, 
and track and field. Basketball, just in¬ 
vented in 1891, spread through the 
colleges immediately. All the aspects 
of Athletic Associations became more 
complex. 


C-O-L-U-M-B-l-A: RAH OR BLAH? 


35 



r 



WITHIN THE GATES: Baker Field, home of Columbia 
football, has welcomed thousands of fans. 


More important, the athletic 
activities had won acceptance on the 
administrative level as a legitimate, 
beneficial aspect of undergraduate life. 
This acceptance spread into official 
support of all sorts of extra-curricular 
activities far removed from athletics. 

Now there had to be rules govern¬ 
ing competition between schools — 
eligibility requirements, uniform play¬ 
ing rules, compatibility between 
sports schedules and class time, medi¬ 
cal supervision. It became inevitable 
that the school administrations would 
have to take formal control. 

Meanwhile, a whole new attitude 
had developed about the desirability 
of organized athletics for everyone, 
and part of. the fallout from intercol¬ 
legiate play was the physical educa¬ 
tion program, often compulsory; intra¬ 
murals; and a network of varsity- 
support teams such as freshman, 
junior varsity and lightweight. 

The point of all this history is that 
the traditional format worked so well, 
and had such deep roots, in that time. 

Once accepted, intercollegiate 
athletics had facets that college of¬ 
ficials were only too glad to use: 


They stimulated alumni enthusi¬ 
asm and identification with the school, 
and thus stimulated financial contri¬ 
butions. 

They received great attention in 
the press and made the name of the 
institution better known. 

They provided a "wholesome" 
outlet for young energies, for specta¬ 
tors no less than for participants. 

They provided on-campus enter¬ 
tainment in varied forms. 

They could be used to teach and 
demonstrate some treasured Ameri¬ 
can ideals: democracy (only ability 
really counted on the field), accom¬ 
plishment (it took self-discipline and 
hard work to excel), patriotism (an ob¬ 
vious and easy transference of school 
loyalty), fair play (well-run games are, 
after all, inherently fair). 

But—even by 1900—some not-so- 
desirable by-products were on the 
scene. All the positive aspects of in¬ 
tercollegiate play rested upon suf¬ 
ficient winning; without that, the emo¬ 
tions aroused turned sour. And trying 
for victory created a whole new area 
of competition — for the talented 
athlete, for the professional coach, for 


publicity, for money to build the facil¬ 
ities to make more money to build 
more facilities. 

Well before World War I, there 
was a flourishing system of high- 
school recruitment, lowered entrance 
requirements, easy grades, under-the- 
table financial support and excessive 
adulation for the outstanding athlete. 

The evils of college football, and 
athletics in general, were the subject 
of national concern, and serious 
studies, in 1905 and in 1929. 

So the problems that come with 
the benefits are not exactly new. 

But until the last few years, the 
system itself was not questioned 
widely. (It was always questioned by 
some, of course.) What has come up 
now can be put this way: regardless 
of the function college athletics served 
in the past, and without arguing the 
relative merits and deficiencies in that 
system, what can the function be from 
now on? 

It is the universal acceptance of 
the idea that the future will be notably 
different from the past that constitutes 
a new element in the situation. 

Money will be harder to find, for 


36 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 









































AS IN DAYS OF LONG AGO: Columbia hosted 
opponents on South Field before football moved uptown. 


all purposes; and larger enrollments 
mean automatically greater expenses 
for any athletic program that tries to 
be comprehensive. Appropriating 
money for athletics will require more 
justification than ever before. 

More important, however, are 
questions of purpose. Do the colleges 
of the future need on-campus recrea¬ 
tion of this type, or is it best left to 
professional teams? Can the partici¬ 
patory benefits be supplied just as well 
without the whole varsity apparatus? 
Are the promotion of student and 
alumni "loyalties" as important as they 
used to be? Are politically involved, 
pluralistic, change-dedicated student 
populations compatible with the 
mechanisms that form strong varsity 
athletics? 

My own answer is that intercol¬ 
legiate athletics, in recognizably tradi¬ 
tional form, do have a valuable role to 
play in college life. 

But I think this role must be re¬ 
thought and re-justified, and not 
simply advocated on a "because we've 
always had it" basis. 

To me, athletics have one over¬ 
whelming virtue: they force you to 


confront reality. 

This is especially important during 
school years, and, perhaps, especially 
important today. 

In the school experience, and in 
the intellectual world outside of 
school, an enormous amount of activ¬ 
ity deals with theory and opinion. 
Theories may be sound, opinions may 
be qualified—but it is just as easy, for 
a particular individual, to cling to an 
unsound theory or form a baseless 
opinion. As long as confrontations 
consist of words, arguments, the feel¬ 
ings behind them and skill in per¬ 
suasiveness, the potential for arriving 
at a wrong conclusion is great. 

One major exception to that is 
the laboratory. In the physical sciences 
(and, I guess, in math) there are no 
"opinions" at the elementary level. 
Gravity will pull the ball down the 
inclined plane whether you like it or 
not, and no brilliant set of insights 
will change that. 

A similar exception occurs in per¬ 
forming music: one can disagree about 
the interpretation of a piece, but the 
ability to play the correct notes on the 
keyboard is subject to absolute stand¬ 


ards: you can or you can't. 

Athletics are the same. 

You catch the ball or you don't. 
You knock the man down or you 
don't. No amount of arguing or 
theorizing will alter the physical re¬ 
sult of your actions. You may hate the 
coach, feel cheated, want to do things 
your own way—but if you want to run 
a mile in 4:12, you'll have to get into 
the kind of shape it takes to do it. 

You can always, of course, reject 
the activity: you don't have to play 
football, or tennis, if you don't like 
the rules. But you can play success¬ 
fully only within the rules and by 
mastering the techniques. 

In that respect, sports really are 
the ultimate democracy—even more 
than the performing arts. There is al¬ 
ways a subjective value judgment in 
the success or failure of an artistic 
performance; in a game, there is al¬ 
ways an objective, tangible result told 
by the final score. You win or you lose. 

This, I believe, is a valuable ex¬ 
perience. 

Nor is it limited to the players. 
The spectator learns the same lesson- 
less intensively, of course, but to a 


C-O-L-U-M-B-l-A: RAH OR BLAH? 


37 












IN THE BEGINNING: The varsity football team, 1888. 
Notice the shape of the football. 


worthwhile degree. Results cannot be 
changed, undone, adjusted to suit 
one's emotional needs. The play, the 
score, the won-lost standing—they are 
there, to be lived with regardless of 
preferences. Again, one can reject the 
entire framework, and be disin¬ 
terested; but one can't accept part of 
it and manipulate the rest. The rooter, 
like the player, must accommodate 
himself to a real-life real-world re¬ 
sult. 

Athletics, in college life, have the 
unique virtue of making this reality¬ 
testing experience available to every¬ 
one, in a forceful manner to most. For 
most students, exposure to lab courses 
is slight and emotional involvement 
(which leads to real learning) nil. For 
most students, playing difficult pieces 
on a musical instrument doesn't come 
up. Any student, in some way, may 
find some personal experience that 
forces him to confront external real¬ 
ity. But only athletics provide that op¬ 
portunity so often, to so many, so 
vividly. 

It is a much-needed antidote to 
the excessive fantasy life that a school 
environment can foster. 


On that basis, 1 believe athletics 
on all levels belong in college life. 

But the above argument, in itself, 
does not justify varsity athletics, or at 
least not completely. I believe varsity 
sports are worth supporting too. 

First of all, they are the only really 
effective way to extend the reality¬ 
testing to spectators. Only a varsity 
sport can produce enough emotional 
involvement so that the values of that 
event can be transmitted to those who 
cannot participate. And many cannot 
participate for a variety of excellent 
reasons. 

Secondly, the traditional effects 
on alumni enthusiasm, fund-raising, 
public relations and so forth can't be 
just shrugged off. They do exist. One 
can feel—as I do—that if these were 
the only justifications for varsity pro¬ 
grams they wouldn't be enough; but 
as one part of the whole picture, they 
are legitimate 'and important. 

Third is the tricky subject of 
"diversity". 

It is a fact that our society stresses 
sports activity in childhood, as some¬ 
thing to do and something to admire. 
That society sets personality patterns 


in individuals long before they reach 
college age. 

Now, outstanding athletes don't 
become outstanding by accident. In 
addition to physical gifts — strength, 
co-ordination — they have emotional 
and motivational profiles that differ 
(in aggregate) from non-athletes. They 
are, at the very least, the ones who 
have chosen to spend countless hours 
becoming good at their games. 

In a college freshman class, in 
America, those who have had estab¬ 
lished athletic success in high school 
have already gone through a quite 
different set of growth experiences 
than those who haven't. 

Whatever else they may have done, 
they have displayed certain qualities 
that we consider valuable in general- 
some degree of self-discipline, toler¬ 
ance of pain, willingness to work 
towards a long-range goal, sacrifice 
of immediate pleasure for future gain, 
and self-reliance. 

Therefore—with the crucial pro¬ 
viso that in all intellectual respects 
this individual meets the standards of 
a particular school —the athlete has 
something to offer his classmates as a 


38 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






BLUE STREAK: The crew, that outdistanced Harvard 
by ten lengths on June 26,1886. 


personality. He has a different orienta¬ 
tion than the strictly book-bound stu¬ 
dent, and both benefit from getting to 
know each other. 

But if the outstanding athlete, in¬ 
delibly so identified by pre-college ex¬ 
perience, has something to offer the 
student body, the college in turn has 
an obligation to him: it must provide 
him with an opportunity to use his 
skills at an appropriate level of com¬ 
petition. 

This athlete is too good to utilize 
his abilities satisfactorily in intramural 
play. He can get high-intensity com¬ 
petition only ag'ainst the best players 
from other schools. 

In other areas, the college com¬ 
munity takes this need for granted. A 
gifted writer faces no inherent ob¬ 
stacle in getting his work published in 
a school newspaper or magazine—or in 
the outside world. An outstanding 
pianist, if he is to play a concerto, 
needs an orchestra of musicians capa¬ 
ble of playing their parts. The physics 
and chemistry students need equip¬ 
ment, and get it, and the outstanding 
ones are quickly brought to facilities 
in keeping with their advancement. 


In athletics, well-known problems 
quickly arise. A great tennis player 
needs only a court and a racket and 
someone to practice with to carry on 
his activity at the proper high level. A 
great football player needs a dozen 
other outstanding football players. 
The cycle of seeking out more athletes 
to go with the athletes on hand starts 
here. 

But one can acknowledge the 
problem, and try to deal with it, with¬ 
out concluding that all the positive 
elements of athletics are undermined 
by it. The "throw out the baby with 
the bath water" theory is as unattrac¬ 
tive when applied to athletics as to 
anything else. 

Athletics, then, belong in the col¬ 
lege of the future because they are a 
major reality-testing device in every¬ 
one's education, because they serve 
several practical public relations func¬ 
tions, because they help create a well- 
balanced student population, and be¬ 
cause they supply a legitimate context 
for talented athletes (who are also 
worthwhile students). 

And these reasons, I submit, will 
be all the more valid in a future col¬ 


lege that is less rigid in structure, rpore 
concerned with "relevance" to stu¬ 
dent needs, containing a more broadly 
based population. 

The changes that will come will 
have to do with definitions of eligibil¬ 
ity, with scheduling, with shifting 
styles of recruitment, with re-appor¬ 
tionment of funds. 

There will also be, I suspect, a 
growing gulf between the out-and- 
out commercial sports colleges (about 
whom I have not been talking here) 
and the majority. The Ivies, 20 years 
ago, achieved a sensible balance in 
athletic emphasis, and there is not the 
slightest indication that they will ever 
fail to maintain it. Hundreds of other 
colleges do too. The "abuses" of over¬ 
emphasized sports—real enough at a 
hundred or so colleges—aren't actually 
related to the programs discussed 
here. 

On the Columbia level, therefore, 
my answers to the two original ques¬ 
tions are: 

How do athletics work? In an es¬ 
sentially out-moded fashion whose 
reconstruction is now in progress. 

Are they worth it? Sure. Q 


C-O-L-U-M-B-l-A: RAH OR BLAH? 


39 






Trouble-Shooter 

Charles E. Silberman '46 special¬ 
izes in crises. Tall, gray-haired, and 
soft-spoken, he looks and sounds like 
the type of man who could salvage 
any disaster. He is certainly expert at 
articulating them. 

In 1964 he authored Crisis in 
Black and White , an unsparing analy¬ 
sis of race relations in this country. 
In 1970 he pinpointed the causes of 
the failure of American education in 
an equally unsparing study, Crisis in 
the Classroom. 

This second book was the result 
of a $300,000 three-and-a-half-year 
survey commissioned by the Carnegie 
Corporation. Silberman,on leave from 
Fortune magazine, where he is a 
senior editor, directed the project. 
He himself visited over a hundred 
classrooms throughout the nation and 
in England. His three-member staff in¬ 
vestigated about 150 other schools. 

First-hand descriptions of class¬ 
room dynamics are printed as com¬ 


pact "items" throughout the book. 
The effect is powerful. It becomes im¬ 
mediately clear just what is happen¬ 
ing that is so wrong in most class¬ 
rooms, and what is right in a very few. 

These "items" are not only vivid, 
they are apparently familiar to stu¬ 
dents and teachers from coast to 
coast. "I've had replies from all over 
the country," relates Silberman, "say¬ 
ing 'I recognize such-and-such item, 
it happened in my class/ but all the 
identifications have been wrong." 

The report paints a depressing 
picture of the quality of classroom life 
from Scarsdale to Harlem. "The most 
important characteristic schools share 
is the preoccupation with order and 
control," it declares. "It is not the 
children who are disruptive, it is the 
formal classroom that is disruptive — 
of childhood itself." And school 
teachers, Silberman suggests, are as 
much victims of "the way things are" 
as the students they're expected to 
"train." 

Fortunately, Crisis in the Class¬ 


room is not another one of those ef¬ 
forts which is so busy indicting the 
educational status quo that it fails to 
perceive the exceptional schools 
where children are learning. From 
such examples, mainly primary schools 
in England and an isolated few in the 
United States, Silberman is able to 
propose realistic directions for re¬ 
form. He advocates a child-centered 
informal classroom, rich in learning 
materials, where children work in¬ 
dependently or in small groups and 
the teacher serves as an encouraging, 
informed guide. 

To create such classrooms, school 
systems and teachers must change 
their attitudes toward youngsters. Ed¬ 
ucators must see children's natural 
energies and curiosities as positive 
enthusiasms to be guided, rather than 
as destructive forces to be quelled.. 
Perhaps most important, teachers 
must be taught how to instruct chil¬ 
dren in a happily noisy environment 
by creating and using information- 
loaded situations. Silberman is con- 


40 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 

























































vinced such qualitative changes can 
take place “without significantly rais¬ 
ing the expenditure per student." 

The educational establishment 
has been remarkably responsive to 
Silberman's conclusions. The former 
Columbia economics teacher has 
been applauded by school officials in 
many states, and has received nu¬ 
merous invitations to run workshops 
and meet with educational groups. 
New York State and City officials have 
praised his work, as has Albert 
Shanker, President of the United Fed¬ 
eration of Teachers (UFT), the union 
for teachers in the New York City 
system. 

The UFT has named Charles 
Silberman recipient of its 1971 John 
Dewey Award, to be presented at a 
ceremony on April 24. Past recipients 
of the award include Justice William 
Douglas, Arthur Goldberg, Cesar 
Chavez and Bayard Rustin. 

The teacher on the beat has also 
responded favorably. According to 
Silberman, ten teachers from one of 
the most repressive school systems 


went to England at their own expense 
to observe primary schools there. 

"Young teachers," he adds, "are 
the most significant force for change. 
They're from an overtly questioning 
generation and they are far less will¬ 
ing than their predecessors to simply 
adjust to the system or quit after their 
first year." 

Silberman, who counts member¬ 
ship on Columbia's Seminar on Higher 
Education among his many obligations, 
remarks that since Random House 
published his report he has been 
working "seven days a week and 
five to seven nights a week." On at 
least five of those days he commutes 
from the Mount Vernon home he 
shares with his wife Arlene, a Barnard 
graduate and freelance education 
writer, and their four sons to his of¬ 
fice at Fortune in the Time-Life build¬ 
ing. Two of his sons are presently at 
college. One is a junior at Brandeis 
and the other is a Haverford fresh¬ 
man. 

At present Silberman is over¬ 
worked but hopeful that the crisis in 


American education may be solved. 
"What I have discovered," he says, 
"is that there is far more recognition 
of present failure than anyone would 
have thought. There is a great de¬ 
sire everywhere for change." 


Slush Fund 

Ferris Booth Hall, the home of 
King's Crown activities and center of 
student life on campus, also houses 
the Alumni Association. But for all the 
contact between alumni and under¬ 
graduates in past years, the Associa¬ 
tion might as well have been in Du¬ 
buque. Of late, however, there has 
been a marked increase in traffic be¬ 
tween Executive Director Max Lovell's 
headquarters in Room 401 and the 
student offices downstairs. The differ¬ 
ence is attributable to some ambitious 
programs initiated by Lovell and his 
staff. 

For example: every executive is 
familiar with the "slush fund," a cash 
reserve which he can dip into to deal 
with unanticipated emergencies and 
finance projects not included in his 
budget. Extracurricular organizations 
at Columbia have discovered that 
they, too, have a slush fund: the stu¬ 
dent activities fund which is main¬ 
tained by the Association. 

Beneficiaries this year have in¬ 
cluded radio station WKCR, which re¬ 
ceived $72 to broadcast the NCAA 
Soccer Invitationals, in which Colum¬ 
bia was represented for the first time; 
also the Hockey Club, which is not a 
varsity team, ahd therefore receives 
only token support from the athletic 
department. 

The activities fund is just one of 
the ways in which the Association 
tries to maintain close ties with under¬ 
graduates. Its alumni-student commit¬ 
tee has conducted lengthy inquiries 
into minority student concerns, ad¬ 
missions, and housing problems. The 
studies were carried out by special 
subcommittees, consisting of students 
and alumni in equal numbers. More 
recently, the committee has turned 
its attention to such diverse subjects 
as drug use and student government. 
"We want to prove," says Lovell, that 
we're interested not only in Columbia 
but in the students at Columbia." The 
students seem to be getting the point. 


SOME PRAISE AMONG THE DAMNS: Charles Silberman has 
authored an unsparing analysis of American schools. 



TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


41 







TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MEDICINE: Scientists at MetPath 
pore over their machines. 


Health 

Programming 

As the old song proclaims, "When 
ah irresistible force meets an im¬ 
moveable object, something's got to 
give." When a dedicated physician 
meets big business, something's 
usually bound to give as well, but in 
the case of Dr. Joseph O'Brien '57, 
his medical integrity and ethics are 
certainly unmoved. And business is 
skyrocketing. 

The business in question is the 
medical laboratory business, which 
Dr. O'Brien has raised to a new level 
of professionalism, efficiency, and 
success. Dr. O'Brien is the president 
of the New Jersey-based Metropol¬ 
itan Pathology Laboratory, a booming 
public company, soon to expand to 


Boston and New York, which deals in 
highly refined computerized and 
mechanized medical tests. 

Despite the success of MetPath, 
Dr. O'Brien is quick to assert that he 
is nevertheless a physician before a 
businessman. "A lab is a crucial part 
of modern medicine," he points out, 
"and the drug companies have been 
buying up labs and running them as 
businesses. We're trying to bring pro¬ 
fessionalism to the labs by attracting 
highly competent physicians." Al¬ 
though MetPath is a public corpora¬ 
tion, O'Brien declares with emphasis 
that "we're not going to let the profit 
motive become the overwhelming 
impetus." 

A product of the tough New York 
streets, Dr. O'Brien originally consid¬ 
ered making a career of the Navy, 
and, in fact, first attended Columbia 


on a ROTC scholarship. While waver¬ 
ing between Neptune and Hippoc¬ 
rates, he was disqualified from the 
Navy because of a minor eye ailment. 
First some time at the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, then a pres¬ 
tigious position in pathology at Engle¬ 
wood Hospital in New Jersey, and 
soon Dr. O'Brien was involved with 
MetPath on a part-time basis. Four¬ 
teen months later he was president, 
and business began to move. 

Although first and foremost a 
physician, Dr. O'Brien knows about 
money and numbers. "The newest 
and best lab machine is the S.M.A. 
1260,*' he explains, "which can run 
twelve tests on a sample at the rate 
of sixty samples an hour. They cost 
$70,000 each, and three hospitals in 
the metropolitan area have one. Since 
the hospitals use them for only two 
hours a day, the prices for the tests 
are more traditional than real." If the 
ramifications of this are not obvious, 
they are not hidden from O'Brien, 
who warns: "When the government 
starts investigating, and wants to 
know why these costs are so high, 
the hospitals are going to be out on 
a limb." 

With the next generation of ma¬ 
chines costing $700,000, the answer 
to the problem, according to O'Brien, 
is regionalization of facilities, prob¬ 
ably organized around institutions 
like his own MetPath." Centralized 
hospitals are inevitable," he predicts 
"and MetPath has gone a long way 
towards this." 

The doctor's concerns range far 
beyond his own business interests. 
He is acutely aware of major trends 
in modern medical practice. "Med¬ 
icine tends to be stodgy," O'Brien be¬ 
lieves. "Physicians are conservative 
and rely more on ritual than on ra¬ 
tionalism." Dr. O'Brien therefore 
sympathizes with many discontented 
med students. "The students are be¬ 
coming activists," he observes, "but 
to the benefit of the hospitals." 

O'Brien prophesizes, however, 
that today's radicals will become to¬ 
morrow's conservatives. "Their lack 
of thought and their emotionalism 
lead to conservatism," he explains. 
There are some, perhaps, who would 
call physician-businessman O'Brien 
conservative, but no-one could pos¬ 
sibly accuse him of lack of thought. 


42 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 











5 
x 

g 
> 
< 
o 

MOUNTAIN LION: William Voelker and his fellow alumni sometimes encounter a 

communications gap. 


Keeping In Touch 

Columbia graduates who cheer 
faithfully at Baker Field or make it to 
Dean's Day each year are as plugged 
into the College as anyone on Morn- 
ingside. But what about alumni too far 
away to stay physically attached to the 
campus? How do they maintain their 
identity as Columbia alumni? What 
problems do they face raising money 
or finding new students for a school 
which is often remembered only 
through faded varsity letters or yellow¬ 
ing yearbooks? 

William Voelker '42 is a Phi Beta 
Kappa graduate who also edited the 
1948 Columbia Law Review. Originally 
a New Yorker (he grew up in the same 
Bronx neighborhood as William 
McGill though he met the new presi¬ 
dent only recently), he has practiced 
corporate law in Denver, Colorado for 


the past 16 years. For 14 of those years 
— since 1957 —he has been an active 
and remarkably well-informed alum¬ 
nus. 

It was student recruiting that first 
got Voelker involved in alumni affairs. 
"Until 1957 we had no alumni com¬ 
mittee canvassing the high schools," 
he recalls. "There was one alumnus, a 
counselor at a Denver high school, 
who would spot 'Columbia types' or 
'Harvard types' and somehow get most 
of them in. The officers of the Alumni 
association out here asked me one day 
what I could do to improve things. I 
told them and they.made me chair¬ 
man of the schools committee on the 
spot." Since then, he has also been 
president of the Columbia University 
Club of Colorado and a member of 
the College Council, and is still a re¬ 
gional director for the Columbia 
Alumni Association. 

Colorado alumni had a remark¬ 
ably active organization 60 years ago, 


and minutes of their meetings are still 
preserved. Today, their successors go 
about their duties with far less cere¬ 
mony than in the past. The associa¬ 
tion used to throw an annual dance 
for alumni and students, but that has 
been scrapped (lack of money and lack 
of interest, Voelker explains). High 
school seniors once endured a "Star 
Chamber" interview with a panel of 
fearsomely crusty graduates; no 
longer. 

There is also little interference (or 
guidance, depending on one's per¬ 
spective) from administrators on 
Morningside Heights. Perhaps this is 
one reason why the association, in 
Voelker's words, has been "practically 
moribund" for the past five years. An¬ 
other is that some traditional alumni 
tasks are now performed by College 
officials. Most alumni activities today, 
says Voelker, are related to fund-rais¬ 
ing. ("I just got a batch of names to 
follow up for this year's John Jay Asso- 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


43 








dates campaign.") But as for recruit¬ 
ing: "I don't think there's any cor¬ 
relation anymore between our efforts 
and the number of Colorado boys in 
the College. Where we used to go to 
high schools to look for applicants and 
interview them extensively, we 
wouldn't dream of doing that now. 
The admissions office has things too 
well-organized." 

The association today is an in¬ 
formal collection of graduates from 
several Columbia schools, including 
the College. "We do have officers but 
I couldn't draw you an organizational 
chart," Voelker says. "And we have a 
charter and a bank balance and that's 
about it." 

In spite of the paucity of formal 
contacts, Voelker and some of his col¬ 
leagues manage to keep in close touch 
with campus developments. He reads 
everything about Columbia he can get 
his hands on (thrpugh he has inadvert¬ 
ently let his subscription to Spectator 
lapse), and displays a minute knowl¬ 
edge of who is saying or doing what 
on campus. Most of his information is 
second-hand. "I was in New York 13 
times last year," the securities lawyer 
said, "but only once to Columbia." 

Colorado alumni have problems 
in helping the university make itself 
known out west, but they are largely 
problems the alumni can't feally con¬ 
trol: getting young Colorado grad¬ 
uates back to their home state, and 
getting more news—any news—about 
the University. 

"The problem with getting alumni 
back here is Denver," comments 
Voelker. "There isn't much we can do 
about it." As for publicity, the last big 
spurt of news about Columbia—in the 
spring of 1968—was more than Voelker 
had bargained for. Because of it, he 
recognizes, "a lot of people out here 
are starting to vote with their pocket- 
books." That and the recession, he be¬ 
lieves, have been especially harmful 
to fund-raising. But he feels that the 
alumni haven't done as much as they 
might to generate some favorable 
publicity of their own. "We had Presi¬ 
dent Kirk out here several times, Presi¬ 
dent Cordier was here too, and McGill 
was here just a few months ago," he 
says. "But we've never had a program 
of faculty speakers, as they have in 
other cities. We could do more." 


The Money 
Rolls In 

Columbia College Fund officials, 
who have been singing the blues for 
the past several years, are now whis¬ 
tling the old hit "My How the Money 
Rolls In." 

A glance at the figures explains 
the change in tune. By February, the 
19th Fund had already collected more 
than half a million dollars, an increase 
of $130,000 over last year's intake at 
the same time. With individual gifts 
averaging $170, and 485 alumni al¬ 
ready designated John Jay Associates 
for having contributed $250 or more, 
Executive Director Al Barabas '36 is 
predicting that contributions will ex¬ 



ceed the million dollar mark by a 
substantial margin. Last year's cam¬ 
paign grossed less than a million for 
the first time in the Fund's recent 
history. 

Officials, who are understandably 
exuberant, offer several possible ex¬ 
planations. "We're doing some things 
we haven't done before," says one, 
"and we're doing other things differ¬ 
ently." One innovation is a student 
telethon, in which undergraduates 
solicit donations by phone. Another 
is the establishment of special alumni 
committees organized by profession: 
doctors, lawyers, etc. The Parents' 
Council has been reconstituted under 
the chairmanship of Hart Perry and 
Arthur Lautkin '32, and has set itself a 
goal of at least $40,000. Perhaps the 
most important factor of all is the 
widespread publicity given in the press 
to the financial plight of Columbia and 
other private universities. "It looks," 
summed up a College administrator, 
"as if people are starting to get the 
message." 



44 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







LION IN THE JUNGLE: Richard Ney, who attacks big business in his book, 
The Wall Street Jungle, is himself a successful broker. 


Wall Street 
Stinger 

Columbia's anti-establishment 
young alumni might be surprised to 
find an ally in Richard Ney '40. Ney, an 
investment broker as well as an actor 
and novelist, has become the most 
militant public interest advocate in 
the world of finance. 

His target is what he calls the 
American fascist-capitalist system, in 
particular the stock exchanges and 
their specialists, but he isn't about to 
throw bombs on Wall Street. Indeed, 
he remains a firm proponent of capi¬ 
talism. Capitalism, according to Ney, 
means that "business exists for the 
people." What we have now, he says, 
is fascism, "when the people exist for 
business." 

Ney outlines his theories in his 


financial best seller, The Wall Street 
Jungle. There is, he warns, an entente 
involving the federal government, the 
newspapers, the regulatory agencies 
and, of cotirse, Wall Street. "I 
wouldn't use the word conspiracy," 
he explains. "But there is a definite 
link between Wall Street and Wash¬ 
ington." Ney charges that the men and 
women in these privileged circles con¬ 
trol the market for their own benefit, 
and he cites an impressive number of 
names, facts and tables to make his 
allegations frighteningly believable. 

His solution is two-fold. First, he 
calls for an entirely new stock ex¬ 
change. And second, he proposes to 
run for President in 1972, under the 
slogan, "Not only couldn't I be bought 
for a million dollars, I couldn't be 
bought for a thousand." Ney has no 
illusions about his prospects for vic¬ 
tory, but does hope to "put the issue 
before the public." 


Underlying the often sensational 
prose is a sober and perhaps justified 
fear for the economic future of the 
nation. "The system," Ney declares, 
"exists to make the poor poorer and 
the rich richer. The majority of the 
poor are honest —and that's why 
they're poor. Youth wants nothing to 
do with this system, and it's no 
wonder. All you have to do to be 
punished is be black or a student." In 
support of this last contention, he cites 
the numbers of prominent financiers 
who have been convicted of fraud and 
freed without serving time in prison. 

The public, says Ney, must sup¬ 
port such men as himself and con¬ 
sumer advocate Ralph Nader, "before 
it's too late — if it's not too late now." 
This note of urgency has been sounded 
often in recent years by reformers and 
radicals —but seldom have these in¬ 
cluded successful, established busi¬ 
nessmen like Richard Ney. Q 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


45 



FROM KEROUAC TO KOCH 


Columbia Has Pro¬ 
duced Some of the Most 
Exciting Writers of 
the Last Two Decades 


By Michael A.Willis 


We now take so for granted the fact that Colum¬ 
bia has produced a number of noteworthy writers 
that it is difficult to imagine a time when this was not 
so. But there was a time — and not many years ago — 
when some teachers at Columbia began to despair 
that the College would ever produce a literary culture 
of its own. Although their students seemed at least 
as bright as those at other universities, and their 
undergraduate writing as promising, once they had 
graduated they wrote very little of worth. Some began 
precociously, even brilliantly, but they had, it seemed, 
little staying power or capacity for growth. 

The appearance, in the 'fifties, of Ginsberg, 
Kerouac and company changed all that for a time. 
Here at last were writers who had met in the College 
and began to write there, and who afterward went on 
to publish works like Howl and On the Road , which 
provided models for an entire generation and defined 
a style of life so unmistakable that it was given a 
name. 

For the College, and especially for its students 
with literary ambitions, the Beats provided what had 
been missing: excitement and a sense of possibility. 
For two succeeding generations — during the late 'fif¬ 
ties and early 'sixties — these students gathered in the 
then-dreary West End Bar and Grill, which Diana 
Trilling has called "that dim waystation of undergrad¬ 
uate debauchery on Morningside Heights." There, at 
the very tables where the Beats had sat, they discussed 
their own writing, the previous evening's poetry 
reading at McMillin, or the latest issue of the Review, 
and enjoyed being a part of a community where im¬ 
portant and controversial works of literature had been 
conceived and were, even then, being created. 

From this renaissance of the literary life at Colum¬ 
bia have come some of today's most imaginative 
young novelists, playwrights and poets. Like artists of 
every generation, they have struggled to find their 
own material and their own voice. For some the chal¬ 
lenge, the creative spark, came in combining the sin¬ 
gularly powerful influence upon the modern imagina¬ 
tion of such writers as Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner and 
Yeats with the new Jewish awareness of Bellow, Mala- 
mud and Roth. In the process some of them, espe¬ 
cially those who had grown up in New York, came to 
realize for the first time that their own experience 
could provide the substance for worthwhile fiction. 


46 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








Among the first to emerge was 
Ivan Gold '53, who came to Columbia, 
right on the heels of the Beats, from 
New York's Lower East Side. Like 
many of his famous predecessors, he. 
worked on the Review — he was also 
associate editor of jester — and wrote 
short stories. One of them, "A Change 
of Air," was much admired by Lionel 
Trilling, who brought Gold to the at¬ 
tention of his editor at The Viking 
Press. It is a remarkable story about a 
gang rape on the Lower East Side—a 
scene in Last Exit to Brooklyn could 
almost have been inspired by it—and 
it became the lead piece in Nickle 
Miseries, a collection of Gold's stories 
published by Viking in 1963. 

Set in New York, Japan (where 
Gold was in the service), Spain and 
an American army camp, they are 
violent, shocking stories with under¬ 
lying humor and pessimism. Review¬ 
ers, who found them "dazzling," "dis¬ 
tinctive" and "memorable," were 
struck by two things in particular. One 
was Gold's keen eye and ear, which 
revealed an intimate knowledge of 
his characters and their backgrounds; 
the other, a technical facility, marked 
by tautness, economy and understate¬ 
ment, which brought them to life, 
fully realized and recognizable, in a 
short space. Lionel Trilling wrote that 
the five stories gave "promise of an 
even further development which will 
make Mr. Gold one of the command¬ 
ing writers of our time." 

Such was the reputation earned 
by Nickle Miseries that Gold lived for 
a time on several fellowships and a 
large advance toward his next book, 
a novel whose appearance was keenly 
anticipated by a band of followers 
which by then included some of the 
leading writers, critics and editors in 
the country. They had to wait nearly 
seven years, and one can imagine their 
surprise when Sick Friends, published 
by Dutton in 1969, turned out to be 
about a Jewish writer in his thirties, a 
Columbia graduate and the author of 
a highly regarded book of stories, who 
struggles to complete his first novel 
while enmeshed in an obsessive, de¬ 
structive love affair. 

Sick Friends appeared not long 
after such books as Frank Conroy's 
Stoptime, Willie Morris' North Toward 
Home, and Frederick Exley's A Fan's 
Notes, all combining fiction and 
memoir. Nevertheless it seemed, for 
all its craft, so painfully autobiographi¬ 
cal that some reviewers found it dif¬ 
ficult to assess as a novel or were 
embarrassed by its graphic sexuality. 
Others hailed it as the long-awaited 


fulfillment of brilliant promise. Again, 
readers were impressed by Gold's 
immense involvement with his ma¬ 
terial, his vitality and literacy/and his 
deeply personal sense of reality. The 
New York Times Book Review num¬ 
bered him among "the few who've 
almost mastered the art of seeming 
artless." R. V. Cassill, who praised the 
book's "splendidly managed lan¬ 
guage," thought Gold "a master of 
the vernacular appropriate to his par¬ 
ticular scene." 

Portnoy's Complaint had just been 
published, and when a few reviewers 
considered the two books together, 



CHARYN: fulfillment in a 
bizarre and violent world. 


the comparison was not always to 
Gold's disadvantage. It was pointed 
out that his characters, "unlike those 
of Roth, are not superbly drawn cari¬ 
catures but are true, bungling people." 
Columbia graduates will especially 
appreciate Gold's amusing and af¬ 
fectionate portraits of two of the Eng¬ 
lish Department's most eminent mem¬ 
bers, whom he credits with having set 
him indelibly on the road to becoming 
a writer. 

From the Class of 1959 came not 
one but two prolific authors, Jerome 
Charyn and Jay Neugeboren. Charyn, 
at the age of 33, has already as¬ 
sembled an astonishing oeuvre and is 
widely regarded as one of the out¬ 
standing young writers in the country 


today. His fifth novel, Eisenhower, My 
Eisenhower, has just been published 
by Holt; there is a collection of his 
stories; and he is the editor of two 
valuable anthologies of contemporary 
fiction which bear his introduction. 

Born in New York City, Charyn 
came to Morningside in the fall of 
1956 from Manhattan's High School 
of Music and Art. He was, he says, "an 
illiterate wild child, a Classic Comics 
graduate, a reader of gangster novels, 
a weightlifter, and a Marlon Brando 
fan." He lived at home and did not 
take part, in any of the usual ways, in 
the traditional literary life of the Col¬ 
lege. During his freshman year he 
failed "the absurd, painful Humani¬ 
ties quizzes" and was "drummed out" 
of the NROTC, but he did get to read 
Sophocles and Rabelais and en¬ 
countered sympathetic teachers in 
such men as Thomas Goethals, Bert 
Leefmans and James Shenton. During 
his last two years he showed some of 
his writing to Andrew Chiappe, whose 
encouragement he remembers with 
special gratitude. 

After graduating with honors he 
studied Russian and comparative 
literature in graduate school, but there 
was little doubt about what he really 
wanted to do. He left school, took a 
job as a recreation director in the City 
Parks Department, and continued to 
write. He has since taught at Stanford 
and at City College and is now on the 
faculty of Lehman College of the City 
University of New York. 

Charyn is a genuine black humor¬ 
ist, an unsentimental prose stylist 
whose books, full of the comic, the 
irrational and the absurd, do not gloss 
over what he has called "the terror, 
the loneliness, and the perversity of 
human existence." Often his stories 
are allegorical, his characters eccen¬ 
trics who seem to parody the infinite 
variety of ways in which human beings 
attempt to fulfill themselves — or 
merely to survive — in a bizarre and 
violent world. This is especially true 
of his third novel, Going to Jerusalem 
(Viking, 1967), about a six-year-old 
chess prodigy, his nymphomaniac 
mother and their epileptic traveling 
companion, a former Nazi chess 
champion. Mark Shorer, who was 
among the admirers of the book's 
verbal energy and imaginativeness, 
wrote that "For sheer inventiveness 
and for a positive excess of the comic- 
grotesque, few contemporary novels 
can match it." 

Charyn also possesses a very evi¬ 
dent talent for capturing, at a certain 
moment in their lives, small, pictur- 


FROM KEROUAC TO KOCH 


47 




esque neighborhoods that have all but 
disappeared — Lower East Side tene¬ 
ments and Second Avenue cafeterias 
in his first novel, Once Upon a 
Droshky (McGraw-Hill), published 
four years after his graduation and 
praised by Mark Van Doren; the slums 
of the East Bronx during World War II, 
depicted in his collection, The Man 
Who Crew Younger and Other Stories 
(Harper, 1967). But Charyn's stories, 
unlike some, are not marred by what 
Robert Alter has called "the palpably 
ersatz touches of Jewish local color... 
the garbled Yiddish, misconstrued 
folklore." His worlds are authentic, 
his convincing characters speak with 
the ring of truth. 

Charyn has been able to extend his 
vision of the Jewish experience into 
broader terms. Whether he is dealing 
with Italians or Polish Catholics or 
Puerto Ricans, the characteristic 
humor and angst are present. The 
metaphor, too, of imprisonment — of 
people trapped in ghettos, concentra¬ 
tion camps, institutions, dark corners 
of the mind — figures strongly in his 
work, together with rebellion-against 
oppressive authority and a fierce will 
to survive. These characteristics are 
used to notable effect in Charyn's 
highly regarded fourth novel, Ameri¬ 
can Scrapbook (Viking, 1969), in - 
which six members of a Japanese- 
American family tell of their daily life 
in a U.S. government "relocation 
camp" during World War II. At once 
funny and sad, American Scrapbook is 
the most experimental of Charyn's 
novels and the first treatment of its 
subject in American fiction. 

Similar themes are evident in an 
earlier novel, On the Darkening Green 
(McGraw-Hill, 1964), set in the Blat- 
tenburg Home for Wayward Jewish 
Boys, whose despotic director is*over¬ 
thrown in a coup led by a defrocked 
rabbi named Rosencrantz. Considered 
by some Charyn's finest work, the 
book's "Dickensian vigor and inven¬ 
tiveness" were much praised, and the 
evocative, unforced narrative was 
likened to Malamud's. 

Jay Neugeboren, Charyn's class¬ 
mate and friend, has the distinction of 
being the only Columbia graduate in 
memory to have written his auto¬ 
biography at the unlikely age of thirty. 
Parentheses, published last year by 
Dutton, is the story of Neugeboren's 
personal and political journey from 
the streets of Brooklyn, by way of a 
politically apathetic Columbia, to full- 
fledged activism. As a portrait of a type 
of activist who came of age between 
the Silent Generation of the 'fifties and 


the revolutionaries of the 'sixties and 
'seventies, Parentheses is probably un¬ 
excelled. 

Neugeboren's description of the 
College during those years of unin¬ 
volvement is convincing. He was in 
the Glee Club, played varsity light¬ 
weight football, wrote for the Re¬ 
view, enjoyed his courses with such 
men as Dupee, Trilling, Chase and 
Chiappe, and was proud of the 
amount of reading and writing the 
College required. He never once saw 
a demonstration or signed a petition. 

"Our fiercest opinions had to do 
with ideas and literature," he writes 


in Parentheses. "We prided ourselves 
on our apolitical sophistication, our 
'disinterestedness' .... We must have 
supported Martin Luther King's bus 
boycott — but I don't remember doing 
so. Birmingham was far away. Harlem 
was equally far — on the other side of 
Morningside Park; and we all laughed 
during Freshman Orientation Week 
when an upperclassman warned us 
about not taking the 'wrong' subway 
line to that 'other' 116th Street stop." 

Neugeboren had not thought 
seriously of becoming a writer when 
he entered Columbia. (On his applica¬ 
tion he listed, as probable career 
choices, advertising, television pro¬ 
ducing and directing, and architectural 
engineering.) But his advisor was 


Andrew Chiappe, his freshman com¬ 
position teacher Charles Van Doren, 
and at the end of his first year he de¬ 
cided to major in English. A year later 
he signified his commitment to the 
literary life by beginning his first 
novel, commuting between Brooklyn 
and the campus each day and Working 
on his book at night. During his senior 
year he finished a second novel under 
the guidance of Richard Chase and be¬ 
gan the round of publishers. 

Neugeboren dropped out of grad¬ 
uate school at Indiana University to 
join a junior executive training pro¬ 
gram at General Motors in Indi¬ 


anapolis, believing — mistakenly — that 
a daily job. would leave him more time 
to write. And there, where he en¬ 
countered, for the first time, blacks 
from the South, blank-faced assembly 
line workers and undisguised bigotry, 
his real political education began. 

His involvement — as a writer of 
political tracts, civil rights demonstra¬ 
tor, teacher of ghetto children and 
early peace march organizer — be¬ 
came so great that for a time his writ¬ 
ing suffered. But writing and politics 
are necessary and inseparable parts of 
Neugeboren's life. The need to main¬ 
tain a delicate balance, between 
activism and the peace and solitude 
which creative work requires, keeps 
him on the move. He has taught at 



NEUGEBOREN: writing and politics are necessary 
and inseparable parts of his life. 


48 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







Stanford, in the New York State Uni¬ 
versity system and in the College's 
English Department, and now lives 
with his wife and child in a small 
village in southern France, where he 
is at work on a new novel. 

Although they reveal a special 
sensitivity to minority life and an 
idealistic view of the world as it could 
be, Neugeboren's books are not 
overtly political. His first published 
novel, Big Man (Houghton Mifflin, 
1966), is the story of a black All- 
American basketball player, caught in 
game-fixing, who loses his job and re¬ 
turns, broken, to Harlem. Hailed by 
The New York Times as "as good a 
first novel as you are likely to come 
across," it demonstrated energy and 
expressive vigor and is remembered 
by many sports fans as one, of the 
finest novels written about basketball. 
One reviewer wrote that "Jay Neuge- 
boren joins the surprisingly tiny com¬ 
pany of fiction writers who have 
captured the essence of the athlete 
as a human being." 

Six of the award-winning stories 
in Corky's Brother, published by 
Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1969, are 
told by an adolescent Jewish boy from 
a lower middle-class Brooklyn neigh¬ 
borhood. They are good introductions 
to what F. W. Dupee has called 
Neugeboren's "innocent, stripped 
prose" — muted sandlot baseball 
pastorals about growing up and the 
sadness that comes with the loss of 
innocence. Geoffrey Wolff wrote in 
Newsweek that "His sentences, like 
Ted Williams' swing, give the illusion 
of ease, an illusion made possible only 
after the exercise of great craft and 
care...." 

. Neugeboren's way with minority 
life is revealed to an impressive de¬ 
gree in Listen Reuben Fontanez 
(Houghton Mifflin, 1968), a novel 
about a lonely Jewish public school 
teacher in his sixties who lives in a 
furnished room on the Upper West 
Side and teaches Hebrew to Puerto 
Rican youths and Spanish to Yeshiva 
students. The Times praised the book's 
understanding and compassion and 
Neugeboren's "shrewd and concrete 
eye for detail." Saturday Review 
thought that Neugeboren realized "a 
special kind of truth about his charac¬ 
ters." One reviewer suggested that 
"There is hardly another young writer 
today who can catch so successfully 
the wild, grim subculture of our urban 
ghettos." That, apparently, is precisely 
what Neugeboren is trying to do. "I 
can do no more, and no less," he said 
recently, "than try to describe, with 


as much precision, clarity, honesty and 
accuracy as I can, what is there." 

Terrence McNally '60 arrived at 
Columbia from Corpus Christi, Texas 
a year behind Charyn and Neugeboren, 
intending to become a journalist. He 
is remembered by classmates as a shy, 
soft-spoken young man, and many of 
them were no doubt astonished when 
he began, in a creative writing course 
taught by George Nobbe, to show 
promise of becoming the most 
notable playwright the College had 
produced in years. One of his first 
plays was published in the Review, 



MANO: CC B drove him into the 
arms of the Church. 


and he wrote the book for the 1960 
Varsity Show, A Little Bit Different. 

Of the several writers mentioned 
here, McNally happens to be the only 
one who is not from New York, yet 
he, more than any of the others, has 
made his career in the city and be¬ 
come a part of its cultural scene. Five 
of his plays were produced in New 
York within a single season, and he 
has become prominent among a 
group of young writers known as the 
"New Playwrights." This group, whose 
members write frequently for off and 
off-off Broadway and educational tele¬ 
vision, also includes, among others, 
Sam Shepard, Israel Horovitz, and 
Arthur Kopit. 

McNally's first production after 


graduation was a one-act play, This 
Side of the Door, performed off- 
Broadway in 1963, when he was 23. 
It was followed two years later by his 
first full-length work, And Things 
That Go Bump in the Night, produced 
on Broadway and directed by Michael 
Cacoyannis. The critics were as much 
baffled as outraged, and the play had 
a short run. Later McNally wrote the 
book for Here's Where I Belong, the 
musical version of East of Eden, and 
worked for a time on the staff of 
Columbia College Today. 

His Sweet Erbs, about a lonely 
young man who kidnaps a girl, strips 
her, ties her to a chair and subjects her 
to a long monologue, opened off- 
Broadway in 1968 and was one of the 
first pjays in New York to feature 
nudity and simulated sexual inter¬ 
course. Again the critics seem to have 
been more shocked than impressed, 
although The New Yorker admired 
McNally's choice of targets—"the self- 
smitten and self-absorbed, the slack 
and the obtuse among us." 

McNally's best-known and by far 
most successful work is Next, which 
ran for two years off-Broadway on a 
double bill with Elaine May's Adapta¬ 
tion. Miss May directed both plays. 
Next, which starred James Coco and 
reminded some viewers of Kafka and 
Ionesco, is about an overweight, 
middle-aged man who is called, per¬ 
haps by mistake, for his army physical 
and suffers a nervous breakdown in 
the process. Clive Barnes found Next 
"extraordinarily funny, but . . . also 
very touching." Time thought it "richly 
comic." 

McNally's latest full-length play, 
Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?, 
went into rehearsal just before Christ¬ 
mas and was performed by the Yale 
Repertory Company in January. Di¬ 
rected by Larry Arrick, it starred Robert 
Drivas, and if all goes well it will be 
produced on Broadway by Lynn 
Austin and Oliver Smith at the end of 
the current season. Meanwhile, Mc¬ 
Nally is at work on the film versions 
of two of his plays, Sweet Eros and 
Noon. A collection of his works, 
Sweet Eros, Next and Other Plays, was 
published by Random House in 1969. 

Faulkner was a postmaster for a 
time; Wallace Stevens sold insurance. 
D. Keith Mano '63 comes into New 
York City once a week to oversee the 
family business in Queens, the X- 
Pando Corporation, of which he is vice 
president. (They manufacture a kind 
of expanding cement.) The rest of the 
time, living in near isolation with his 


FROM KEROUAC TO KOCH 


49 




wife and two small sons near upstate 
Newburgh, Mano writes. His fourth 
novel, The Death and Life of Harry 
Goth, has just been published by 
Knopf, and, at 28, he is about to com¬ 
plete his fifth. 

An English major, Mano never 
wrote anything “creative" in the Col¬ 
lege but was known instead as an 
actor, a leading member of Players. 
Andrew Chiappe once mentioned to 
his Shakespeare class that Mano's 
Richard III was one of the finest he 
had ever seen. When he graduated — 
summa cum laude — he was awarded 
a Kellett Fellowship to Clare College, 
Cambridge, where he studied with 
F. R. Leavis and acted with the Mar¬ 
lowe Society. 

He gave up the Kellett after a year 
and returned to this country with his 
wife, an actress he had met in Eng¬ 
land. He studied for a time on a 
Woodrow Wilson, appeared in several 
off-Broadway productions, taught at 
the Henry Street Playhouse and toured 
with the National Shakespeare Com¬ 
pany. It was during that busy time — 
when he also took over management 
of the family firm — that Mano began 
his first novel, Bishop's Progress, pub¬ 
lished by Houghton Mifflin in 1968. 
It is the story of an Episcopal bishop 
who enters a New York hospital for. 
heart surgery and the twelve days of 
testing — physical and spiritual — he 
undergoes. In a major review, R. V. 
Cassill called it "witty, disturbing, en¬ 
tertaining, grave, full of suspense, and 
a prolonged meditation on the riddle 
of faith in our epoch." Regarded by 
John Leonard of The New York Times 
as the best first novel published in the 
United States that year, Bishop's Prog¬ 
ress attracted wide attention and im¬ 
mediately established Mano as one of 
the finest young writers in the country. 

In Horn, issued by Houghton 
Mifflin the following year, Mano tells 
of the confrontation between a black 
political leader (with a horn sprouting 
from his forehead) and a timid white 
clergyman assigned to a Harlem 
church. This second book drew even 
greater praise. "Constantly gripping 
and deeply rewarding," said the Wall 
Street Journal. John Leonard wrote 
that "Horn is an absorbing novel of 
character. . . . Names like Graham 
Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Georges 
Bernanos come to mind; but they are 
just scribbles on the margin of my 
admiration. I can think of few young 
novelists today capable of dealing in 
such an accomplished and compelling 
way with such important themes." 

War Is Heaven! (Doubleday, 


1970), Mano's third novel, concerns 
an American army jungle patrol in a 
fictional South American republic, 
helping to assist the established 
regime against Communist guerrillas. 
The Times compared it to The Red 
Badge of Courage. Its hero, Sergeant 
Clarence Hook, is young, black and 
deeply religious, a totally committed 
soldier who believes that war is good 
because it reminds men of their in¬ 
significance. 

Reviewers have remarked that 
Mano's novels are actually about 
something: good, evil, suffering, self¬ 
confrontation, the futility of war, but 



GOLD: violent, shocking, 
with underlying humor 
and pessimism. 


most of all about Christianity, a sub¬ 
ject which almost no one but Graham 
Greene writes about these days. 
Mano's Christianity is Protestant and 
pessimistic, but whether, as various 
readers have thought, it is also simple, 
profound, fatuous, or fiendish, it is 
there: a real and unavoidable presence 
which his characters must confront, 
often at their peril. 

Mano's family is Protestant but 
not devout, and he was never con¬ 
firmed. How, then, did he come to be 
preoccupied with religion? Just as he 
acknowledges — half-jokingly — that 
he got his inspiration for Horn from 
Ripley's Believe It or Not, so he claims 
that Columbia, and particularly a 
poorly taught CC B section, drove 


him into the arms of the Church. "In¬ 
stead of reading, I went to chapel." 

The novelist who deals with such 
profundities risks losing his readers, 
but Mano's stories are curious mix¬ 
tures of symbolism, realism and 
fantasy which are compelling in them¬ 
selves, the result of considerable skill, 
wit and imagination. Mano has never 
been in a hospital, was never in the 
army or South America, has no black 
friends and went through Harlem 
once — on a bus. Yet no one who 
knows any of these worlds can doubt 
the authority with which he writes. 

Among poets — one thinks of 
Berryman '32, Ginsberg and Simpson 
'48, Hollander '50 and others — Co¬ 
lumbia has fared especially well. In 
recent years the single most profound 
influence among younger poets has 
been the so-called New York School, 
whose members include John Ash- 
bery, Kenneth Koch and the late Frank 
O'Hara. The New York School of 
Poets has ties which link it as in¬ 
extricably to Columbia as to New 
York itself. Among other things, many 
of its members met at Columbia in 
poetry workshops and writing classes 
taught by Professor of English Koch, 
and it seems appropriate that the re¬ 
cent collection, An Anthology of New 
York Poets (Random House, 1970), 
should have been edited by two Col¬ 
lege graduates, Ron Padgett '64 and 
David Shapiro '68. Both are con¬ 
sidered to be among the New York 
School's most prominent younger 
members, and some of their own best 
poems are included in the anthology. 

Shapiro, the son of a Newark 
dermatologist, was admitted to the 
College in 1964 after three years of 
high school and a year of travel. Al¬ 
ready an accomplished violinist who 
had performed with Stokowski and 
the New Jersey Symphony, as well as 
a published poet, Shapiro majored in 
English and contributed to the Re¬ 
view, to Spectator and King's Crown 
Essays, and to leading publications 
outside the University. His first book 
of poems, January, was published by 
Holt while he was still an under¬ 
graduate. Marianne Moore was one of 
its admirers. 

Although not a member of SDS, 
Shapiro was among those who oc¬ 
cupied Low Library during the up¬ 
heaval of 1968, and a photograph of 
him, cigar in hand, sitting in Grayson 
Kirk's chair, was widely reprinted. Of 
his pose he later said: "What I was 
deliberately trying to do was to 
parody the elite, gang, clique, cabal, 
club. This is the technique of parody- 


50 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




I don't smoke cigars." Upon gradua¬ 
tion Shapiro went off to Clare College, 
Cambridge, on a Kellett. While he was 
in England, Dutton issued his second 
collection, Poems from Deal. 

Shapiro has been called a serious 
light poet. Many of his poems are 
about his childhood, and many do ex¬ 
hibit a certain jauntiness and playful 
use of words which make this charac¬ 
terization an apt one. A reviewer in 
Poetry magazine spoke of Shapiro's 
"incredible mastery of the language" 
and his "ear sensitive to every nuance 
of idiom." .Others have pointed to 
such distinctly musical qualities as 
rhythmic sensitivity, skillful modula¬ 
tion, the rise and fall of phrases. Re¬ 
calling his career as a violinist and the 
fact that his father and two sisters also 
play musical instruments, Shapiro 
agrees that his poetry "grew out of 
all this music" — plus the youthful in¬ 
fluence of Eliot, Pound, Rimbaud, 
Ginsberg and Koch. 

Shapiro first met Koch at a sum¬ 
mer poetry workshop when he was 
still a high school student. Together 
they edited Learn Something, Amer¬ 
ica, a collection of children's stories 
and poems published by The Brook¬ 
lyn Museum in 1968. Shapiro has won 
several awards, including the New 
York Poets' Foundation Award and a 
Robert Frost Fellowship to Bread 
Loaf, and during the past year read at 
the YMHA Poetry Center in Manhat¬ 
tan, perhaps the ultimate acknowledg¬ 
ment that a young poet has indeed 
arrived. A third book of his poems is 
being readied for publication later 
this year. 

Among a number of other Col¬ 
lege writers who deserve more than 
passing mention are poet and trans¬ 
lator Richard Howard '51, whose third 
volume of poetry, Untitled Subjects, 
won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize; Alex Kar- 
mel '52, whose recent historical novel, 
My Revolution, was enthusiastically 
received; and Michael Goldman '53, 
now amemberof the College's English 
Department, whose most recent col¬ 
lection of poems is At the Edge. Dan 
Wakefield '55, known first as a soci¬ 
ologist, produced one of the past year's 
most commercially successful novels— 
his first—in Going All the Way, about 
two boys who return to Indianapolis 
after the Korean War. Samuel Astra- 
chan, also from the Class of 1955, 
whose much-admired first novel, An 
End to Dying, was written while he 
was an undergraduate, has since pub¬ 
lished two others, The Game of Dos¬ 
toevsky (1965) and Rejoice (1970). 


Mark Dintenfass, a talented member 
of the Class of 1963, is the author of 
two very funny books, Make Yourself 
an Earthquake (1969) and The Case 
Against Org (1970). 

It may be true, as Lionel Trilling 
for one believes, that no Columbia 
writing tradition, in any positive or 
honorific sense, has emerged. Still 
there is the strong impression, affirmed 
by more than one of the writers rep¬ 
resented here, that Columbia is a place 
where imagination counts, where ex¬ 
cellence in writing is valued and culti¬ 
vated, and where some students and 
faculty share a deep, discriminating 
commitment to literature. 


The faithfulness, humor and grace 
with which these writers have recon¬ 
structed their various worlds have 
been singled out so often that it would 
be agreeable to suppose that there is 
something about Columbia itself — 
some peculiar blend of poetry and 
reality, perhaps — which encourages 
this special vision. As undergraduates 
we used to pride ourselves on being 
forced, by the University and the city, 
to a clear-eyed perception of things 
as they were, and we knew what Whit¬ 
man meant when he spoke of New 
York with "its tremendous and varied 
materials . . . the advantage of con¬ 
stant agitation, and ever new and rapid 
dealings of the cards." 

From the University we also 


gained an appreciation for the power 
and effect of words. There is not a 
single writer here who does not prize 
technical prowess, craftsmanship, and 
the conscientious, responsible use of 
language. Jay Neugeboren spoke what 
might be a credo for them all when he 
wrote recently of his feeling "that 
when you can count on so little else 
in this life, you can try, at the least, to 
be accountable — to hold others ac¬ 
countable — for what you say and the 
way you say it." To preserve this feel¬ 
ing and to inspire it in every suc¬ 
ceeding generation of students is, 
perhaps, as much of a tradition as any 
school can hope for. 


McNALLY: the critics were as much baffled 
as outraged, and more shocked 
than impressed. 


Michael Willis '64 took his 
M.A. in European history at 
Columbia in 1965, and is now on 
the staff of a New York publish¬ 
ing house. His principal interest, 
both in college and in graduate 
school, was cultural history, and 
he studied with such men as 
Andrew Chiappe and Lionel 
Trilling. 



FROM KEROUAC TO KOCH 


51 




They Liked Ike... 

As President of Columbia 


When Spectator Came Out 
For Stevenson In 1952, 

I. R. S. Didn’t Raise An Eyebrow. 
But Others Did. 


In its 93-year history, Spectator has supported 
Presidential candidates as widely separated in time 
and philosophy as William McKinley and Eldridge 
Cleaver. But the most controversial endorsement it 
has ever issued came in 1952, when it called for the 
election of Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. 

Even in 1952, a Spectator Presidential endorse¬ 
ment constituted no break with tradition. If anything, 
it revived an earlier tradition, interrupted at various 
points during the century. As long ago as 1896, the 
editors had declared in favor of William McKinley, 
warning their readers that "Bryan's banner is sullied 
with the stain of national dishonor. 

"We hope that those men who have left these 
halls and are now scattered in every state of the 
Union," continued the newspaper, "will do their 
utmost to break down the false barriers that Bryan is 
endeavoring to create between the 'masses and 
classes.' " 

Not until 1932—36 years and 9 elections later— 
did Spectator announce for a Presidential candidate 
again. Its attitude during those years was summarized 
in a 1928 editorial, which stated flatly: "This news¬ 


paper is not officially interested in presenting its 
readers news and editorials not directly pertaining to 
this campus." 

Then, in '32, the paper came out for Norman 
Thomas, while conceding that he had no chance to 
win. In '36, '40 and '44 it backed Roosevelt, the last 
time by a narrow three-to-two vote of its five-man 
managing board. 

In '48, however, Spectator reverted to the hands- 
off policy which had prevailed throughout the first 
quarter of th century. Except for signed statements 
by sponsor^ of various candidates, and reports of an 
occasional speech, even its news columns scarcely 
betrayed the fact that it was a Presidential year. Dur¬ 
ing the month of October, editorials focussed on such 
issues as the extension of training table privileges to 
the wrestling team (the editors were in favor); the 
opening of the Lion's Den to students from G.S. (the 
editors were opposed); and the finances of the Band 
and the Glee Club. The two editorials on Election 
Day itself consisted of a complaint that the College 
lacked adequate facilities for housing and recreation, 
and a tirade against the throwing of water bags from 


52 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



Columbia Spectator 

FOUNDED 1877 JL 


Ike and Adlai 

1—The Great Disenchantment 

When the Black Sox scandal rocked the baseball world 
31 years ago, legend has it that one small tyke strode up 
to Shoeless Joe Jackson, the White Sox star, and wailed, 
“Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Joe could only hang his head in shame. 

The Eisenhower campaign is also the story of a great 
disillusionment. The hopes of millions of Americans who 
once believed in Eisenhower’s great crusade have now been 
shattered. 

Before the national convention, the American people 
were told by those who promoted the general’s candidacy 
that he was uniquely fitted to be President. They contended 
that he represented a foreign policy which the great ma¬ 
jority of Americans have come to accept. It was a policy 
of helping our allies to help themselves, dictated by our 
enlightened self-interest.” This policy, it was argued, would 
be scuttled should Senator Taft gain the nomination and 
presidency. 

General Eisenhower, it was further contended, would 
restore integrity, frugality and decency to government. When 
the Eisenhower forces refused to compromise on the issue 
of the Texas delegation at the GOP national convention, the 
nation was told that here was a man who would never com¬ 
promise with what he considered to be wrong. 

Though his supporters admitted that his knowledge of 
domestic affairs was limited, they argued that his proved 
ability to select the right men for the right posts more than 
compensated for this deficiency. 

After his nomination, when the general announced that 
he would lead a great crusade to restore the people’s faith 
in their government, the great disillusionment began to 
take form.. 

Consider: The company that the general keeps. A man 
may be unlike his acquaintances, but General Eisenhower’s 
support of Senators Jenner and McCarthy effects an in¬ 
excusable alliance with what is worst in the Republican Party. 
The general is naturally concerned with holding his p£rty 
together, but has sacrificed principle for expediency. 

(Continued on Page 2 ) 


dormitory windows. 

By 1952, therefore, there was 
ample precedent for a decision either 
to announce a choice or remain aloof. 
Why, then, should Spectator's support 
of Stevenson have precipitated such a 
fuss? 

For one thing, the daily had taken 
no Presidential stands since the war. 
For another, it was the heyday of 
McCarthyism. Any expression of even 
the most cautiously liberal sentiments, 
especially on the campus, invited the 
wrath of the witch-hunters. Third, and 
most important of all, Stevenson's op¬ 
ponent was Dwight D. Eisenhower, 
popular war hero and President of 
Columbia. 

On Wednesday, October, 1, Spec¬ 
tator published the first of two edi¬ 
torials endorsing Stevenson. “I don't 
think we ever questioned the pro¬ 
priety of our doing so/' recalls Jerry 
Landauer, who now writes for the 
Wall Street Journal and was then 
Spectator's editor-in-chief. “We took 
it for granted that if we agreed on the 
merits we should make an endorse¬ 
ment. The only question was whether 
we could get the necessary unanimity. 
We'd agreed that if we couldn't, we 
wouldn't do it. 

“We were all very disillusioned by 
the Eisenhower campaign, in particu¬ 
lar the refusal to repudiate McCarthy. 
When it came to taking gutsy posi¬ 
tions, the Great Crusade just wasn't 
there." 

The first editorial, which went 
through a number of drafts before it 
was deemed acceptable by all eight 
editors, appeared on the front page, 
next to a story headlined “Lamont 
Claims Korean War Can Be Plaited." 
It reflected the disillusionment which 
Landauer describes. It was entitled 
“The Great Disenchantment," and its 
lead paragraph compared Eisenhower 
to Shoeless Joe Jackson, the baseball 
idol who had taken money during the 
Black Sox scandal, and whose youth¬ 
ful fans had implored him, “Say it 
ain't so, Joe." 

“Consider," the editorial urged, 
“the company the general keeps"—a 
reference to his alliances with Sena¬ 
tors Albert Jenner of Indiana and 
Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. 

“Consider: the low level of 
Eisenhower's speeches ... 


“Consider: the Nixon affair''—in 
which, the newspaper charged, 
“General Eisenhower allowed a tele¬ 
vision soap opera ... to be submitted 
to the American people. 

“Eisenhower," concluded the edi¬ 
tors, “has played the role of party man 
to the hilt... 

“In short, the campaign has 
shown that Eisenhower the politician 
is a plodding, orthodox, unimaginative 


thinker." 

Reaction was not long in coming. 
At first, it was entirely favorable. The 
following morning's edition carried 
four telegrams, all congratulatory: 
from UAW-CIO public relations di¬ 
rector Fred Winn, from journalists Sam 
Ragan of the Raleigh News and Ob¬ 
server and Irving Dilliard of the St. 
Louis Post-Dispatch , and from alum¬ 
nus Edward R. Fay Jr. '32. 


THEY LIKED IKE... AS PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA 


53 








ACADEMIC QUESTION: Eisenhower was their 
president , but Spectator's editors still 
favored Stevenson. 


IN VAIN: Adlai E. Stevenson 
captured the Spectator election but lost 
the national one. 


That same day, a Thursday, the 
editors published their second edi¬ 
torial, also on page one. It was called, 
"Why Stevenson?" and praised the 
Democratic candidate for ."daring to 
criticize the policy of the very pres¬ 
sure group he was addressing" when 
he attacked character assassination in 
a speech to the American Legion. 
Stevenson, proclaimed the editorial, 
had "met the issues squarely" and 
"shown great respect for the intelli¬ 
gence of the American people." The 
lead news story for that issue an¬ 
nounced the formation of a Faculty 
for Stevenson group on the campus. 

On Friday, October 3, negative 
responses began to pour in. Millard 
Faught '38, vice-chairman of Columbia 
Alumni for Eisenhower, accused the 
newspaper of "taking advantage of the 
greater news possibilities in indorsing 
the presidential candidate of the 
Democratic Party." Three more con¬ 
gratulatory telegrams appeared, but so 
did a wire from Miami, which read: 
"DEAR SENSATIONALIST - EVERY¬ 
ONE KNOWS THAT YOUR SCHOOL 
HAS BEEN OVERWHELMINGLY PINK 
FOR YEARS STOP IKE TRIED TO GET 
YOU OUT OF THE RED STOP SIN¬ 
CERELY - YOUR GENERATION." 


Another correspondent com¬ 
plained, in a letter, that " Spectator's 
editorial support of a presidential 
candidate is in bad taste and ill- 
advised . . . They are . . . overstepping 
the limits of their function as a student 
paper concerned primarily with Uni¬ 
versity and College news." 

Acting President of Columbia 
Grayson Kirk replied with a statement, 
affirming the University's commit¬ 
ment to freedom of the press for its 
undergraduate editors. And Spectator 
explained its stand in an editorial en¬ 
titled "A Newspaper's Job": 

Some readers fear that our 
position may be interpreted as 
the position of the majority of the 
students of Columbia ... No 
newspaper, including this one, 
ever claims at all times to repre¬ 
sent the dominant opinions of the 
community it serves. 

In that same Friday edition, 
Spectator reported that the Barnard 
Bulletin had also come out for Steven¬ 
son. 

The following week — Monday, 
October 6 through Friday, October 
10—the volume of mail in response to 


the editorial was so great that the 
editors set aside a special section, 
apart from the regular letters column, 
to accommodate it. Much of the cor¬ 
respondence came from people who 
had no apparent ties to Columbia. 
"Masterpieces of pseudo-intellectual 
rubbish," sneered a graduate student 
in Monday's issue. "Honest and coura¬ 
geous," exclaimed Dr. Joseph Landy, 
P & S '14. "Congratulations for having 
the courage of stating your collective 
conviction," wrote a Mrs. Jeaninne 
Dawson. But the most outspoken 
communication of the lot came from 
Sylvia Hanks Wood: 

I am more than proud to say 
I am a graduate of Columbia Uni¬ 
versity of the Class of Oral Hy¬ 
giene of 1918, when real people 
were proud of their University. 
Not like now with people like you 
who would dare cut the throat of 
their President. What do you think 
Dr. Butler would say if he were 
here? ... It is not customary for 
students to mix in politics, there¬ 
fore walk carefully before you 
criticize Ike Eisenhower. 

P.S. Have you served your 
country? 


54 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








Meanwhile, Monday's lead head¬ 
line announced that 23 Columbia 
professors had attacked the ethics of 
vice-presidential candidate Richard 
Nixon, whose campaign fund has been 
the subject of considerable contro¬ 
versy earlier in the year. 

By the next morning, the level of 
rhetoric had escalated. "I quite con¬ 
fidently feel that we are better off 
without . . . such radical publications 
as you are evidently identifying yours 
with," wrote Mrs. Myron Thomas 
Shannon of Sterling, III. A Florida 
man who identified himself as "an 
alumni of Columbia" declared: "I 
can't see how you get the absolute 
gall to represent the views of the stu¬ 
dent body. Keep it up and the rest of 
the nation will look upon you and 
C.C.N.Y. as sister institutions." 

Herbert L. Chabot, a first-year 
Columbia law student, pointed out 
that "if it is wrong for a journal in a 
one-newspaper school to subject the 
students to one opinion, then it is at 
least as wrong for the private owners 
of a journal in a one-newspaper town 
to subject the citizens of that town to 
one point of view." 

And George F. Jenkins of Charles¬ 
ton, W. Va. demanded to know "the 
names, ages, place of birth of both 
your associates and their immediate 
ancestors. Such facts often have a 
considerable bearing on the charac¬ 
ter and thinking of people given to 
making such statements of the nature 
you have printed." 

On Wednesday, October 8, James 
M. Blackwell, President of the College 
Alumni Association, expressed "shock" 
in a letter to Kirk over Spectator's 
editorial stand, although he conceded 
that the authors might be "excused" 
by virute of "their age and inexperi¬ 
ence." Blackwell also levelled a blast 
at the 23 professors who had com¬ 
mented on the Nixon Fund. 

That day's "Ike and Adlai" letters 
section contained four pieces of mail. 
Three were sympathetic. The fourth, 
from Mrs. Louise A. Lewis of Kansas 
City, Mo., chided the editors: 

General Eisenhower has 
repeatedly voiced his belief, faith 
and admiration of you, and I 
should think you could not bring 
yourself to turn your backs on 
him, particularly you students of 


the University of which he is 
President. 

The following day, Acting Presi¬ 
dent Kirk, replying to Blackwell, re¬ 
affirmed his free speech statement of 
the preceding week. Blackwell re¬ 
portedly responded, somewhat in¬ 
congruously, that Kirk's position did 
not differ from his own. Spectator 
noted in an editorial that Blackwell 
had professed himself most incensed 
by the linking of Columbia's name to 
a partisan political position, and 
wondered what the Association's 
president thought of Columbia Alumni 
for Eisenhower. Also on Thursday, the 
New York Daily News, in a banner 
headline, accused nine of the 23 anti- 
Nixon professors of belonging to 
"communist fronts." 

Thursday's choicest correspond¬ 
ence came from Henrik J. Thaat, of 
Helsinki, Finland, who wrote: 

You lack experience at life. 
You don't know a hole in the 
ground from yourself. You are de¬ 
spicable low down ornery cusses. 
You will shout with the mob. 
You lack foresight, deduction, 
discrimination, addition, subtrac¬ 
tion, multiplication. You will stab 
a man in the back and cry after¬ 
ward. You are on the surface 
skin deep. You have not the quali¬ 
ties that make for an understand¬ 
ing being. 

Enclosed with the letter was a 
clipping from a Finnish newspaper, 
which nobody on Spectator had been 
able to translate. 

Friday's "Ike and Adlai" section 
contained three letters. Npne of the 
writers appeared to be connected 
with Columbia. 

From New Haven, Connecticut: 
"I would like to congratulate the edi¬ 
tors of the Spectator for courageously 
'expressing the thoughts of many 
young Americans." 

From Bluffton, South Carolina: 
"Thank you! General Eisenhower 
could have no better endorsement 
than having Columbia's half-baked 
young radicals agajnst him." 

From Coral Gables, Florida: "Dis¬ 
loyalty is a cardinal sin, and thereby 
you've disgraced that great N.Y. Uni¬ 
versity where most of my family have 


graduated." 

Friday's edition was the last to 
publish a separate "Ike and Adlai" 
letters section, though occasional let¬ 
ters appeared afterward in the regular 
letters column, all of them fairly se¬ 
date. During the following week, the 
controversy generated by the Specta¬ 
tor editorials died down, only to be 
revived briefly toward the end of the 
week by Walter Winchell. Winchell, 
the well-known syndicated columnist, 
reported the emergence of "a revolt 
against the editorial board of the 
campus newspaper." Citing unnamed 
"pro-Eisenhower students," the colum¬ 
nist contended: 

The situation has worked this 
way, according to those student 
critics: persons of one train of 
thought (once in control of the 
editorial board) have seen to it 
that their successors think the 
same way. 

On Friday, October 17, Spectator 
replied, in an editorial captioned 
"Dear Mr. Winchell": 

We will continue to support 
Adlai Stevenson no matter how 
many alleged charges you print 
from alleged student sources. 

And that, to all intents and pur¬ 
poses, was the end of the flurry, which 
in any event had been generated al¬ 
most entirely by persons outside the 
University community. Except for ad¬ 
verse reactions on the part of a few 
alumni, Landauer reports, Spectator 
received "no flak whatever" at Co¬ 
lumbia. 

Four years later almost to the day, 
the eight members of another Specta¬ 
tor managing board gathered to con¬ 
sider a Presidential choice. According 
to the editorial which appeared the 
following morning, "After reviewing 
their disagreements — thrashed out 
many times in private discussions— 
they decided not to endorse a Presi¬ 
dential candidate. 

"And then," concluded the 
editorial, "They turned out the lights, 
locked the door, and headed back to 
the West End." 

Not with a bang but a whimper. 

Q 


THEY LIKED IKE... AS PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA 


55 




Alumni Authors 



The Sound of Laughter by 

Bennett Cert '20 is a treas¬ 
ury of old jokes, stories 
and anecdotes, along with 
riddles, limericks, and a 
sampling of the "atro¬ 
cious" puns for which Cerf 
has long been famous. 
(Doubleday, $6.95) 



The Unpardonable Sin: A 
Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne 

by lames Play stead Wood 
'27 is an engaging, warm 
and thoroughly well done 
biography of Hawthorne 
for young readers. Ages 10 
up. (Pantheon, $4.50) 


a Love & Fame by lohn Berry¬ 
man '32 is a collection of 
fresh, bright poems dealing 
with the poet's yearnings as 
a youth and his beginnings 
as an artist. (Farrar, Straus, 
and Giroux, $6.50) 


Legal Ethics by Raymond L. Wise '16 is a hand¬ 
book for attorneys containing the full text of 
the American Bar Association's new Code of Pro¬ 
fessional Responsibility with explanations of the 
purpose and meaning of each canon and discipli¬ 
nary rule. (Matthew Bender, $12.95) Order Please, 
also by Wisg, is his blueprint for erecting a world 
of decency, reason and law. (Central Book Com¬ 
pany, $7.50) 



Jean-Jacques Rousseau by 

Matthew losephson '20 is a 
thoroughly researched bi¬ 
ography of the life and 
work of the formidable 
eighteenth century philos¬ 
opher and man of letters. 
(Russell & Russell, $21.00) 



Autobiography by Louis Zu- 
kotsky '23 is the poet's 
account of himself, in verse 
set to music by his com¬ 
poser-wife. Zukofsky pref¬ 
aces this slim volume by 
saying, "As a poet I have 
always said that the work 
says all there needs to be 
said of one's life." These 
poems, which deal with 
both the prosaic objects and delightful imaginings 
of Zukofsky's life, prove his point. The result is 
rich and charming. (Grossman Publishers, $5.95) 


w Hellenistic Ways of Deliv- 

f erance and the Making of 

the Christian Synthesis by 

John Herman Randall '28 
analyzes the post-Alexan¬ 
drian emphasis on the in¬ 
dividual's moral condition 
and the consequent emerg¬ 
ence of cults of deliver- 
•«.&?, ance. Randall shows how 

’ these Hellenistic systems — 

the Epicurean, Stoic and Skeptic — were absorbed 
by Rome and eventually assimilated into Christian¬ 
ity by the great synthesizer, Augustine. (Columbia 
University Press, $7.95) 



The Music Forum: Volume 

II edited by William }. 
Mitchell '30 and Felix Salzer 
contains a variety of articles 
on the many aspects of 
music —theory, analysis and 
performance. Included in 
this volume are a reduced 
facsimile of the autograph 
of Beethoven's Opus 69, a 
study of Landini's treatment 
of consonance and dissonance, and other charted 
studies dealing with Chopin, Bach and Bartok. 
(Columbia University Press, $13.50) 




Claude Kirk: Man and Myth 

by Ralph de Toledano '34 
and Philip V. Brennan, Jr. 
is an irreverent and unflat¬ 
tering portrait of Florida's 
ex-governor which ends 
. 1^1 w - , with the ominous warning, 

S,s "Caveat emptor—Buyer Be- 

ware! — the Romans had 
VMjPSP 1 said. After almost four years 
\ .Mr 1 of a man who was all 
mouth, Florida was coming to know what they 
meant." The authors of this study, published last 
July, are both staunch Nixonite Republicans. 
(Anthem Paperback, 95c) 


A History of the African 
People by Robert W. July 
'38 is a 605-page history of 
■I | the black people of Africa 

1 from ancient to modern 
If* -'•w times which concentrates, 

villi’ ’’ , (j however, on the last cen- 
tury-and-a-half of internal 
African politics. To anyone 
interested in the African 
continent and peoples this 
book is an invaluable primer. (Charles Scribner's 
Sons, $15.00, also available in paperback) 



Cocteau by Francis Steeg- 
muller '27 is an urbane and 
elaborately prepared life- 
story of the famed opium- 
addicted, homosexual 
French poet and filmmaker. 
The book captures the 
often decadent ambience of 
artistic society during the 
Belle Epoque. (Atlantic- 
Little, Brown, $12.50) 



Mark Twain: An American 
Prophet by Maxwell Ceis- 
mar '31 is a rich and intelli¬ 
gent interpretation of the 
life and works of Samuel 
Clemens. The volume 
abounds in high-spirited 
detail and lively insight; its 
enthusiasm is happily con¬ 
tagious. (Houghton Mifflin, 
$10.00) 



New Hope for the Childless 
Couple: The Causes and 
Treatment of Infertility by 

Sherwin A. Kaufman '41 is 
a highly readable as well as 
informative treatment of an 
important and, for many 
families, painful subject. 
(Simon and Schuster, $4.95) 


56 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






The Social History of Pov¬ 
erty: The Urban Experience 

edited by Francesco Cor- 
dasco '42 consists of re¬ 
prints of 22 volumes of 
reference material for the 
study of impoverished city 
dwellers in the late nine¬ 
teenth and the early twen¬ 
tieth centuries. Titles in¬ 
clude Life and Labour of 
the People in London, circa 1902; Tenement Con¬ 
ditions in Chicago, (1901); and How The Other 
Half Lives, Jacob Riis' sketches of the lives of the 
poor in New York near the end of last century. 
Many volumes contain new introductory essays 
by Cordasco. (Garrett Press, $350.00 for the whole 
series; individual volumes priced between $13.50 
and $52.75) 



20 Plays of the NO Theatre, 

edited by Donald Keene '42 
is a selection of plays in 
the active repertory of 
Japanese theater from the 
late fourteenth to the late 
sixteenth century. The short 
dramas — consisting of po¬ 
etry (which is sung) and 
prose — are important both 
as works for the stage and 
as masterpieces of Japanese literature. (Columbia 
University Press, Hardcover, $15.00; Paperback, 
$4.95) 




The Young Scientist by John 
Navarra '49 with Joseph 
Zafforoni is a series of six 
elementary- school text 
books. The authors believe 
that every child is a natu¬ 
ral scientist, and their six 
concept-based books aim to 
provide a framework for 
understanding the inter¬ 
relationships between dif¬ 
ferent types of scientific knowledge. Ages 6-11. 
(Harper and Row, Prices range from $2.75 to $3.75 
per book) 



Cold Mountain: 100 Poems 
by the T'ang poet Han-Shan 

translated by Burton Wat¬ 
son '49 offers fine examples 
of the Golden Age of Chi¬ 
nese poetry. Cold Moun¬ 
tain has been described as 
a state of mind as well as 
a locality; and these poems, 
which had so much impact 
on later Buddhist literature, 
are permeated with a sparkling mysticism. (Colum¬ 
bia University Press, Hardcover, $5.50; Paperback, 
$2.25) 



Confessions of a Cultisl: 
On The Cinema, 1955-1969 

by Andrew Sarris '51 is a 
collection of the critic's 
film reviews and witty 
think-pieces on cinema 
spanning fifteen years of 
crusty, independent and 
sometimes brilliant judg¬ 
ment. Sarris likes movies 
but chooses with care the 
shrines at which he pays homage. This volume 
echoes many of the enthusiasms and irreverences 
which have made his film courses here so popular. 
(Simon and Schuster, $8.95) 



Phtalocyanine Technology 

by Yale A. Meltzer '54 ex¬ 
amines recent develop¬ 
ments in phtalocyanine 
products and progress in 
such fields as dyes, pig¬ 
ments, lubricants, nuclear 
energy, guided missiles, 
electro-photography and 
food. (Noyes Data Corp., 
$35.00) 


Going All The Way by Dan 

Wakefield '55 is a well- 
written and humorous 
novel about two young 
men's raunchy struggles to 
attain adulthood in the 'fif¬ 
ties. The book succeeds in 
evoking a curious love-hate 
nostalgia for the age of 
Sinatra and girls who were 
''hot to trot." (Delacorte 
Press, $6.95) 


The Mirror of Infinity: A Critics' Anthology of 
Science Fiction edited by Robert Silverberg '56 
provides a baker's dozen of all-time great sci-fi 
stories, each prefaced with a two or three page 
comment by different critics of the genre. (Harper 
& Row, $6.95) 


Student Power, Participa¬ 
tion & Revolution edited 
by lohn Erlich '59 and Susan 
Erlich is a compendium of 
32 movement articles writ¬ 
ten between 1960 and 1970 
which give some perspec¬ 
tive on the changing atti¬ 
tudes and growing mili- 
tance of the new young 
left. Two of the articles 
specifically pertain to Columbia: "The Education 
of a Radical" by an anonymous leader of the '68 
rebellion, and "Notes on Columbia" by Mark 
Rudd. (Association Press, $5.95). Strategies of 
Community Organization edited by John L. Erlich 
'59, Fred M. Cox, Jack Rothman and John E. 
Tropman is a collection of 26 essays dealing with 
making communities more responsive and respon¬ 
sible to their inhabitants. The book advocates 
planned change through well thought-out inter- 
ventive measures and programs. (F. E. Lee Peacock 
Publishers, Paperback; $5.95) 


The New Deal and the Last 
Hurrah by Bruce M. Stave 
'59 studies the effect of the 
New Deal on urban politi¬ 
cal machines and chal¬ 
lenges the traditional view 
that bossism declined dur¬ 
ing the '30s, '40s and '50s. 
Using Pittsburgh as a case 
study, Stave concludes that 
power was merely trans¬ 
ferred from the Republican machine to the Demo¬ 
cratic machine. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 
$8.95) 






The Artist in American So¬ 
ciety: The Formative Years 
1790-1860 by Neil Harris '58 
is an important inquiry into 
the relationship between 
our fledgling republic's 
values and its culture. This 
study of the changing so¬ 
cial attitudes towards art 
and artists, and of the 
achievements and ideals of 
artists themselves, should be a rich contribution 
to the field of intellectual history. (Simon and 
Schuster, Clarion Paperback) 


Guide for Mental Health Workers by Armando R. 
Favazza '62, Barbara Starks Favazza and Philip M. 
Margolis is a monograph written for non-profes¬ 
sional workers in community psychological 
health. The manual explains — in jargon-free lan¬ 
guage - the basic categories, causes and symp¬ 
toms of mental illness, and the ways in which 
volunteer workers can help sick individuals. 
(University of Michigan Press, $2.95) 




A Thinking Man's Guide to 
Pro Football by Paul Zim¬ 
merman '58 is a lively 
compilation of anecdotes 
and insights acquired dur¬ 
ing the sportswriter-author's 
five years on the football 
beat. (E. P. Dutton, $6.95) 


America's Black Past edited by Eric Foner '63 is a 
collection of historical readings focusing on the 
black community itself, its ideologies and social 
patterns. In choosing work's on slavery, for exam¬ 
ple, the editor avoided articles on the planter 
regime or slave codes, and selected instead two 
essays dealing with the effects of slavery on the 
mass of slaves. This compact book should broaden 
the horizons of students who seek a usable, human 
history of black people in America. (Harper & 
Row, $12.50). Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men is 
Foner's original study of the ideology of the Re¬ 
publican Party before the Civil War. He argues 
that the Party's endorsement of the working man's 
freedom of contract led, inevitably, to the clash 
with the Southern States over the extension of 
slavery. (Oxford University Press Galaxy Paperback, 
$2.75) 



Labor and Development in 
Latin America by Joseph R. 
Ramos '59 is the optimistic, 
well-documented report of 
an economist on the size, 
quality and sectoral distri¬ 
bution of the labor force 
in Latin American coun¬ 
tries. (Columbia University 
Press, $12.50) 


The Case Against Org by Mark Dintenfass '63 is the 
boisterous howl of a Falstaffian fat man contem¬ 
plating the ecstasy and anguish of devouring the 
world through chocolate covered cherries. (Little, 
Brown, and Company, $5.95) 


ALUMNI AUTHORS 


57 









Obituaries 


Those who wish to write to relatives of the deceased may do so do 
Columbia College Fund , 4 West 43rd Street , New York , N. V. 70036 


1900 Henry G. Alsberg 
November 1, 1970 
Everett M. Hawks 
July 28, 1970 

1904 Frazer W. Gay 
July 12,1970 

1905 William L. Wilson 

1907 Oliver P. Chisholm 
October 5, 1970 
Fritz A. Leuchs 
January 3, 1969 

H. Raymond Smith 

1908 Carlo D. Celia, Sr. 

November 17,1970 

Austin P. Montgomery 

October 31,1970 

1909 Samuel Melitzer 

July 6, 1970 

1910 Sydney L. Goodman 
September 24, 1970 
David E. Kronman 
January 10, 1970 
John O'Brien 
August 22,1969 
Maurice Picard 
December 7, 1970 

1911 C. Alan Hudson 
January 15, 1971 

1912 Percy E. Landolt 
September 27,1970 

1913 Gove Hambidge 

September 25,1970 

Wharton Miller 

March 8,1970 

1914 Herbert C. Dickinson 

1915 Leonard I. Houghton 
December 4, 1969 

1917 DeBaun P. Claydon 
Joseph A. Domes 
Edmund C. Smith 
November 11,1969 
Frederick A. Wurzbach, Jr. 
November 8,1970 

1918 Albert S. Lathrop 
June 22,1970 
Howard W. Rolston 
May 23,1970 

1919 Norman F. Darmstatter 
September 30,1970 
Leopold Nathan 
August 25, 1970 
Charles Paley 
October 6,1970 

1920 Moses Goldberg 
November 27, 1970 
John C. Litt 
Janaury 12, 1971 
Henry Meyer, Jr. 

1921 Reginald B. Weiler 

1922 Nathan Friedman 
Mordecai S. Jacobsen 
September 15,1970 
Herbert T. Johnson 
Edward J. Rosenwald 
Abraharrt Schmith 
March 20,1970 
Harold Walters 


1923 Douglas D. Donald 
November 5, 1969 
James C. Goggin 
November 9,1970 
Saul Rubin 
January 23, 1971 

1924 Robert S. Altshuler 
July 11, 1970 
Rudolph P. Cohen 
October 3,1970 
Bernard Goldman 
December 1970 

1925 Samuel R. Feller 
January 26, 1971 
Benjamin Franklin Hearn 
October 1970 
Frederick N. Nye 
September 24,1970 
George A. Rawler 
October 15,1970 

1926 Walter H. Bruckner 
September 6,1970 

1927 Allan W. Ackerman 
July 4,1970 
William L. Story 

1928 Richard M. Ace 
August 5, 197Q 
Edwin J. Dealy 
January 23,1971 
Richard F. Meyer 
July 9, 1970 
Jacob I. Smith 

1929 Howard Pearson 

December 22, 1970 

1930 William T. J. Middleton 

October 1,1970 

1932 Michael Bibko, Jr. 

February 12, 1970 
Matthew F. O'Brien 
May 1, 1969 

1933 Deforest Ely 
January 3, 1971 
Richard Hirsch 
January 16, 1971 
Carl H. Schweikhardt 
November 6,1970 

1935 W. Parke Johnson, Jr. 

1936 William N. Chambers 

January 1970 

1938 John S. De Vries 

March 21, 1970 

Wilford J. Ratzan 

October 1970 

1940 George Stonebanks 

September 16, 1970 

1943 Russell C. Archibald 

November 10,1970 

1944 Eugene P. Wolfahrt 

November 19, 1970 

1945 William J. Caselton 

July 1,1970 

1946 Victor Weston (ne Wolkodoff) 

Summer, 1970 

1950 George E. Haelters 

1963 John George Haddock 

March 1970 


Charles H. Tuttle '99, lawyer, educator and civic 
leader, who headed investigations into political 
and judicial corruption which ultimately ended 
in the downfall of Jimmy Walker's Tammany 
administration. In 1926 he helped to establish 
New York City's Board of Higher Education, and 
served as a member until his retirement 40 years 
later. For the last 20 years of his life he was 
unpaid general counsel to the. National Council 
of Churches, on whose behalf he successfully ar¬ 
gued for a "released time" plan for religious 
education in the United States Supreme Court. 
Died January 25, 1971. 


William King Gregory '00, ichthyologist and pal¬ 
eontologist, associated for many years with Co¬ 
lumbia and with the New York Museum of 
Natural History. He specialized in the anatomy 
and dentition of fish and animals, published 360 
scientific titles between 1900 and 1951 and taught 
many of today's professors and museum curators. 
Died December 29, 1970. 



George E. Warren 


George E. Warren '03, life trustee of Columbia 
University, who served until last spring as clerk 
of the Board of Trustees. After a long career in 
banking, he retired in 1947 as a vice president 
of what is now the Chase-Manhattan Bank. In 
addition to laboring almost full-time for Colum¬ 
bia, George Warren engaged in many philan¬ 
thropic activities. He was a director of the 
Associated Hospital Service of New York, and a 
trustee of the finance committees of Tuskegee 
Institute, New York Infirmary and the Ladd Foun¬ 
dation. Died January 28, 1971. 


Abraham A. Newman '10, Jewish historian, edu¬ 
cator and rabbi, president of Dropsie College 
from 1941 to 1946. Dr. Neuman raised the stand¬ 
ards of Jewish scholarship, and published numer¬ 
ous articles, as well as one massive history. The 
Jews in Spain. Died December 29, 1970. 


58 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




Gonzalo Cordova de Garmendia '10, an active 
alumnus and energetic supporter of community 
and church projects in Baltimore, where he was 
a high-ranking official in the state civil service. 
Died December 10, 1970. 



Louis H. T. Mouquin 


Louis Monquin '15, insurance executive, athlete, 
alumni medalist and champion varsity fencer, 
who also was named to the all-American water 
polo team. Mr. Monquin, a vice-president of 
Hagedorn and Co., was awarded the Columbia 
University Alumni Medal in 1958. Died October 
23, 1970. 



M. Lincoln Schuster 


Max Lincoln Schuster '17, publisher, journalist and 
scholar, was one of the founders of Simon and 
Schuster. As a publisher, he introduced many 
esoteric works to a \yide audience, as well as 
such titles as “How to Play Winning Checkers," 
and is largely responsible for the inundation of 
the American book markets with "pocket- 
books." Mr. Schuster was also a trustee of 
Montefiore and New York Jewish hospitals, and 
the winner of the 50th Anniversary Medallion 
from the Columbia School of Journalism. Died 
December 21, 1970. 


Rudolph Aebli '19, nationally known opthalmolo- 
gist and professor of ophthalmology, and de¬ 
veloper of many new techniques and specialized 
instruments. He gained national attention in 1951 
when he performed one of the earliest corneal 
transplants, restoring sight to a blind seaman. 
He was past president of the ophthalmic section 
of the New York Academy of Medicine, and 
clinical professor of ophthalmology at N.Y.U. 
Died January 4, 1971. 


Henry Simon '23, author, critic and scholar, and 
editor of books on Shakespeare, music and 
teaching. Vice-President of Simon and Schuster, 
he also taught at Columbia. Died October 3, 
1970. 



Andrew Stewart 


Andrew E. Stewart '26, senior partner of the law 
firm of Royall, Koegel and Wells, where he spe¬ 
cialized in corporate law. A former trustee of 
the Village of Plandome, he was class treasurer 
for more than 25 years. Died January 13,1971. 




Emanuel Freedman 


Emanuel Freedman '31, assistant managing editor 
of The New York Times. As foreign news editor, 
he directed coverage of such events as the Suez 
crisis, the Hungarian uprising and the Geneva 
Conference of 1954, and won numerous journal¬ 
ism awards. He served three terms as president 
of the Columbia Journalism School alumni. Died 
January 27, 1971 . 


Samuel Coleman '31, a former labor mediator who 
returned to Columbia in 1959 to study and teach 
philosophy. His introductory philosophy course 
was a favorite of undergraduates, and he himself 
was highly regarded for his approachability as 
well as his skill as a lecturer. 



Oleg. G. Cherny 


Oleg Cherny '48, financial consultant who was re¬ 
cently appointed chief financial advisor to the 
New Communities Program of the Department 
of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Cherny 
was a director of the United Student Fund and a 
member of many management associations. Died 
October 7, 1970. 


OBITUARIES 


59 



















‘Cambodia is a 
Correspondent’s Nightmare’ 


No Road Is Secure — 

And Eight Journalists 
Have Already Perished There 

By Arnold Abrams 


HONG KONG—You see a lot of s-> as the ex¬ 

pression goes, in the course of covering the Indo¬ 
china war, but full awareness of its human cost does 
not sink in until men who mean something to you 
start turning into statistics. 

They needn't be long-time acquaintances or in¬ 
timate friends. Just knowing them and sharing some 
of your life with them is sufficient. 

We report at length about victims in Vietnam 
and Cambodia, but rarely come to know them as 
people. We enter and leave their lives by helicopter, 
pausing between landing and takeoff to view their 
burned-out villages, their bomb-cratered fields, and 
the bodies of their children. For all that some of us 
try, we remain something approximating voyeurs— 
more concerned, perhaps, than pilots who drop the 
bombs, or officers who prattle about body counts at 
the daily briefing in Saigon—but voyeurs nonetheless, 
reporting the pathos we see but knowing only in a 
second-hand way what it is really about. 

This also holds true when American soldiers, the 
other victims, of this war, are the subject of our dis¬ 
patches. For years we have accompanied the grunts 
who beat around the boondocks, scared and miser¬ 
able and with no idea why they are there; but it 
always boils down to us writing about them. 

In Vietnam it can hardly be otherwise, for this 
war has separated correspondents from combatants 
as never before. It has nothing to do with educa¬ 
tional background or economic status. It is a matter 
of having choice. We can choose the patrol or opera¬ 
tion we want to accompany; then, within limits, we 
can decide when we have had enough, and split. 


60 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




Arnold Abrams '67, former 
Spectator managing editor and 
Newsday reporter , studied Chinese 
as a Journalism Fellow at Colum¬ 
bia's East Asian Institute. He has 
been based in Hong Kong since 
September , 1968 , and has traveled 
extensively through Southeast Asia. 
His dispatches appear regularly in 
the Far Eastern Economic Review 
and The New Leader, and are 
carried in numerous domestic 
newspapers. He is a frequent con¬ 
tributor to CCT. 



24 HOURS TO LIVE: Reporter Abrams (left) and ABC correspondent Steve Bell 
(center) attend briefing with Frosch the day before Frosch was killed. 


Almost all correspondents pay a price for this privi¬ 
lege: we remain outsiders, with only ephemeral involve¬ 
ment in what we report. But when the war catches those 
with whom we have some ties —namely, colleagues — it 
produces much pain among us. 

We accept such happenings with some grace in Viet¬ 
nam, where death is a recognized risk assumed by all 
who enter combat zones. Bullets and booby traps and 
B-40 rockets must take a toll among those who come within 
range. It is an impersonal thing, getting killed or maimed 
in Vietnam. 

Cambodia, however, is another matter. The circum¬ 
stances victimizing correspondents there have been espe¬ 
cially horrifying. Of eight newsmen killed and 21 captured 
in that country, none was in a combat situation or even 
accompanying government troops when it happened. Al¬ 
most all have had their fate determined after face-to-face 
confrontation with their captors. That is a very personal 
thing. 

Cambodia is a correspondent's nightmare. On the 
straightest of roads in the most serene surroundings, death 
may lurk behind any thicket. In Vietnam you know which 
areas are insecure and when to seek military escort; in 
Cambodia reliable military intelligence or protection is 
non-existent. You are on your own in a land roamed almost 
at will by enemy forces. 

Some precautions can be taken, like checking with 
inhabitants along the route, and avoiding long, empty 
stretches. But Cambodians, however friendly, may not 
know what lies a mile outside their village; and long, 
empty stretches of road are the rule rather than the 
exception. 

It was on such a stretch that CBS correspondent 
George Syvertsen '53 and producer Gerald Miller were 
killed last spring. They were traveling in a jeep which was 
blown up by an enemy ambush. 


That incident, which apparently killed an Indian 
cameraman and Cambodian driver as well, could have 
occurred in any war. Enemy attackers probably mistook 
Syvertsen's jeep for a military vehicle, and fired a B-40 
rocket before asking any questions. But the same ambush 
soon caught more newsmen, and in their case no mistakes 
were possible. 

Minutes after destroying the jeep, enemy soldiers sur¬ 
rounded two civilian vehicles which had been following. 
Those cars carried two Japanese cameramen employed by 
CBS, and a four-man NBC team led by correspondent 
Welles Hangen. They all were taken prisoner. 

Several .days later, Hangen's Cambodian driver showed 
up in Phnom Penh. He said he had escaped in the con¬ 
fusion following an attack by government forces. He re¬ 
ported that his colleagues had been treated well during 
their first hours of captivity, usually the most crucial. But 
there has been no direct word of those men — or any other 
still-captive correspondents — since then. 

Syvertsen's death and Hangen's unknown fate are 
tragic for professional as well as personal reasons. Each 
was a talented and thoughtful newsman, fluent in several 
languages, concerned with human aspects of important 
stories. 

Syvertsen, 38, concentrated in English literature and 
Soviet studies as an undergraduate at Columbia. He learned 
Russian while in military service, and spent seven years 
with the Associated Press in New York, Warsaw, and Mos¬ 
cow before joining CBS in 1966. He had reported from 
Asia since 1967. 

One of his finest tributes comes from a competitor and 
fellow alumnus, ABC correspondent Howard Tuckner '56. 
"George was the purest journalist I've ever met," says 
Tuckner, a veteran Vietnam hand like Syvertsen. "He never 
let what can be the liquid-and-lollypop world of TV change 
him. He never tried to prove anything. He never indulged 


CAMBODIA IS A CORRESPONDENT'S NIGHTMARE 


61 










story, that furtive feeling of being on the outside peeking 
in. There is keen awareness of the danger. But corny and 
even crazy as it may seem, professional dedication can 
override personal fear. 

Hangen, 40 and the father of two small children, was 
no wide-eyed cub reporter or overgrown boy scout. He 
was a veteran foreign correspondent, with a total of 18 
years spent overseas for The New York Times and NBC. 
He was a Council of Foreign Relations Fellow at the Uni¬ 
versity in 1965, and one of the most concerned newsmen 
covering this region. 

Welles studied Chinese while at Columbia, and con¬ 
tinued his language lessons in Hong Kong. He was a 
voracious reader, fascinated by whatever region he was 
reporting from. A lunch with him here invariably turned 
into a three-hour seminar on Southeast Asia; I, for one, 
always enjoyed and benefited from it. 

Like others, Welles was dissatisfied with the perform¬ 
ance of communications media in reporting and interpret¬ 
ing the most significant story of the past decade. "I 
sometimes wonder if people back home can make any 
sense out of all the stuff we give them/' he once remarked. 

A similar sense of obligation drove Frank Frosch, whom 
I only came to know on the day before his death last fall. 

We met by chance that day in Taing Kauk, a strategic, 
well-blasted village about 50 miles north of Phnom Penh. 
.Frank, UPI bureau chief in the Cambodian capital, offered 
me a ride back after we had spent some time interviewing 
army commanders heading the government's northern 
offensive. 

During the return trip, I sat with Frank and Kyoichi 
Sawada, the Pulitzer Prize-winning UPI photographer who 
was killed with him. Sawada was as reticent as he was 
camera-skilled, so the return ride was largely a running 
conversation between Frank and myself: two strangers who 
suddenly found they had a lot to talk about. 

We started back with car windows up, air-conditioning 
on and radio tuned to the American Forces Vietnam Net¬ 
work in Saigon, which was broadcasting a taped play-by- 
play of a Cleveland Browns game. I remarked that listening 
to pro football in an air-conditioned Mercedes, while pass¬ 
ing through the war-torn Cambodian countryside, was a bit 
much for my psychic system. 

Frank understood. He chuckled, then tightened. Trav¬ 
eling this way can be dangerous, he said, because it instills 
an unreal sense of well-being and impenetrability. "It prob¬ 
ably was a factor with most of the guys who've gotten it," 
he added, referring to correspondents already killed or 
captured in Cambodia. 

Partly because of his receding hairline, partly because 
of what he had experienced in Southeast Asia as an army 
officer and combat correspondent, Frank seemed older 
than his 28 years. Tough-looking but soft-spoken, he had 
been happy working for UPI in Atlanta after a year-long 
army tour in Vietnam. Yet he had volunteered to return. 

"Strange as it may seem," he said, "I really wanted to 
get back out here." I said I didn't think it strange at all; 
that, for some, life in Asia has a lure that goes undiminished 
after only a year or two. 

I mentioned that most of my family, and some friends 
also, thought I was crazy to forsake a placid suburban 


in showbusiness heroics. He was above that. He tried to 
get the story, period." 

Now there are many ways of getting stories, and no 
one story, in any case, is worth what it cost Syvertsen and 
the others. But serious newsmen cannot simply sit in Saigon 
or Phnom Penh and parrot official versions of what is hap¬ 
pening. If you put out that kind of crap, you might as well 
go into pubiic relations and get good pay for it. 

Some correspondents are motivated by the lingering 
sense of never coming fully to grips with the Indochina 

HANGEN: no wide-eyed 
cub reporter 
or boy scout. 


62 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



existence in the States for this. He nodded. "Mine too," he 
said, adding that his wife and two children were looking 
forward to joining him soon in Phnom Penh. 

We passed a company of Cambodian soldiers strag¬ 
gling to the front, and conversation turned to differences 
between these people and the Vietnamese. We both ad¬ 
mired the Cambodians' patriotic fervor and commitment 
to defend their country. We also chuckled over the foibles 
of the Cambodian army — particularly the beer-guzzling 
propensities of some officers supposedly leading the latest 
offensive. 

Then we stopped for drinks at a roadside stand near a 
ferry crossing on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Frank said 
I was wise to forego chopped ice, a health risk in this 
region. Yet he let the merchant put some in his glass. 
"What the hell," he said. "If you're going to live, you might 
as well do it right." 

As we stood sipping, a truckload of pigs pulled up, 
heading to market. Several dozen of the animals were on 
their backs, feet tied and stuck straight up, all squealing 
like mad. They were frightened and uncomfortable and 
riding to their death, and it bothered both of us to see 
them. "They know where they're heading," Frank said. 

I had recently read a short story by Sholom Aleichem, 
"Pity for Living Creatures," pertinent to this scene. I won¬ 
dered aloud whether the Cambodian driver felt any com¬ 
passion for his unhappy cargo. Frank smiled and shook his 
head. "They're gentle people," he said, "but that's asking 
too much of them." 

On the ferry we sat together at the bow, our feet dan¬ 
gling overboard not far above the water, and spoke of 
what our work meant to us. It's an absurd business, Frank 
said, considering the risks, the pay, and general working 
conditions. But he readily agreed when I remarked that, 
for moments of sheer satisfaction, however infrequent, 
journalism beats selling insurance or being an accountant. 

Still, Frank said he would be getting out of this field 
someday because he doubted he would feel the same en¬ 
thusiasm in 20 years. Then he voiced a private fear that 
gnaws at us all: 

"One thing I don't want to do is overstay my time, 
then limp around trying to do what younger guys can do 
without working up a sweat," he said. "I've seen too many 
burned-out types like that. I don't want to be one of them." 

Frank was considering radio work, but teaching was a 
strong possibility. He already had earned a master's degree 
and compiled some classroom experience. He also had 
coached high school basketball and football, and had en¬ 
joyed it. 

His interest quickened when I remarked that I still 
prided myself on being able to put in a jump shot from the 
keyhole. "Did you bring your sneakers here?" he asked. I 
hadn't. "Maybe you can dig up a pair," he said. 

The last few minutes of the trip, after the ferry cross¬ 
ing, were spent in silence. I was thinking of the future. I 
suspect Frank was, too. When we got back in the gathering 
darkness about 5:30 p.m., I shook hands all around and 
thanked him for the ride. "Don't mention it," he said. 
"Let's get together for dinner later this week." 

We didn't, of course. Frank and Sawada were gunned 
down at 5:30 p.m. the following day, Oct. 28, as they 


drove together on a lonely stretch of highway south of 
Phnom Penh. It was a stretch no more or less secure than 
most roads outside the Cambodian capital. 

There were indications that both men were executed 
by their ambushers, despite the fact that they were driving 
a civilian vehicle, clad in civilian clothing, and carrying 
proper credentials. This was not war, it was murder. 

What determines who among us lives, and who dies, 
in Indochina? Only one thing is certain: professional ability 
and personal decency play no part in the process. Q 

SYVERTSEN: "He never tried 
to prove anything. He tried 
to get the story." 



CAMBODIA IS A CORRESPONDENT'S NIGHTMARE 


63 


Letters 


More on the Gym 

Mr. Walter J. Green '58, ended his letter in 
the Fall 1970 Columbia College Today, 
■'Were it not so pitiable, the fdihe- 
occupation with the,gymnasium would be 
laughable." In his letter he wrote, "I and 
most of those who attended Columbia 
College with me worthy of my respect, 
cared not the slightest about Columbia's 
gymnasium and intercollegiate athletic 
program." Giving the gym no priority, he 
presented his list of needs: faculty salaries, 
scholarships, strengthening the library, and 
improving community relations. 

Such self-righteousness bothers me. Does 
Walter Green realize that a faculty made 
of flesh and spirit, as well as mind, find 
working conditions as important as salary 
(and often more important)? Just a simple 
parking place for a commuter to 
Morningside Heights can make all the 
difference in the world. Rewards for work 
well done take a variety of forms, not the 
least of which is physical well-being. A 
sauna bath, a modern pool, some squash 
courts and a good trainer are a part of 
faculty salary at most large universities. 
Unfortunately, professors who would put 
such sybaritic pleasures ahead of total 
dedication to intellection will no doubt 
remain unworthy of Mr. Green's respect. 

I wonder, too, if Mr. Green has considered' 
using modern gym facilities for, as he puts 
it. "improving relations with the abused 
Morningside Heights community"? Think 
of the neighborhood youth programs in 
which Columbia's own needy students 
could find employment. Perhaps some of 
those local kids would end up at 
Columbia; individual confidence develops 
in a variety of ways. A new gym can help 
with all the priority needs listed by Mr. 
Green except strengthening the library, 
and some of the library staff might enjoy 
regular workouts away from the stacks. 

Finally, does Mr. Green understand that 
intercollegiate athletic programs came 
into being a century ago and have re¬ 
mained with us because a large number of 
students enjoyed and benefited from 
them? Despite pressure from proponents 
of iritellectualism (as opposed to true 
intellectuals), most colleges and univer¬ 
sities have not felt that they were wasting 
educational funds on gymnasium facilities; 
indeed, if we are to believe our sister 
institutions, they have been quite willing 
to open as many avenues to total 
education as possible. A great deal of 


experiential lab work in self-understanding 
has occurred over the years, thanks to 
intercollegiate athletics. The current 
human potential movement in humanistic 
psychology continues to validate the 
classical ideal of the whole man. Has Mr. 
Green forgotten that fine old Columbia 
motif? Why subtract the educational 
option that athletics provides because it 
does.not happen to be one's own choice? 
Higher education already suffers too much 
from tunnel vision. 

I sympathize with the difficulties 
presented by the issue of a Columbia 
gymnasium, and I trust Columbia will 
support a high gym construction priority 
only to the extent it continues to honor 
the educational goal of human wholeness, 
an ideal espoused since 1754. It seems 
obvious to me that balance and wholeness 
have become far more than classical 
abstractions in an urban society 
characterized by rampant narrowness and 
specialization. For that reason alone I find 
it pitiable that Mr. Green would continue 
to accord his personal respect only for 
mere congruence wih his own life style. 
Pitiable, but not laughable. 

Henry M. Littlefield '54 


One of Columbia's main problems has 
not been a lack of attention to academic 
affairs, but a lack of sufficient concern for 
its athletic facilities and programs. This 
has resulted in the University being 
ridiculed because of the poor performance 
of some of its teams, especially the 
football team, and the appearance of that 
pile of kindling wood at Baker Field. It 
31 so resulted some years ago in the 
drowning of a student under the board¬ 
walk which had been constructed at one 
end of the swimming pool in University 
Hall in an attempt to make that inade¬ 
quate facility sufficient for swimming 
contests. 

What are simpleminded and pitiable are 
those lopsided creatures who are unable 
to appreciate that man is a physical sport- 
enjoying being as well as a mind. 

Columbia should engage in athletics and 
it should do them well, just as it has 
excelled in its intellectual activities. 

Frederick C. Stark, Jr. '51 


Mr. Walter J. Green's letter to the editors 
appearing in the Fall 1970 issue was well 
taken. He depicts correctly the present 
over emphasis on athletics on the part of. 
the alumni. Be that as it may, athletics, 
intramural and intercollegiate, contribute 
toward the social, physical, and mental 
development of the student. Mr. Green's 
thing was not athletics and I would not 
say that he is worse off because of his 
disinterest. My thing was three hours a 
day, six days a week, for eight months of 
the year for four years at Baker Field and 
South Field. I loved it! On one hand I 
support Columbia College athletics for its 
inherent values, but I would side with 
Mr. Green when I see mature alumni 
becoming genuinely unhappy if a 
Columbia team loses. They have lost sight 
of the true purpose of athletics and in its 
place have embraced a philosophy in 
which winning is all that matters. 

I urge Columbia to select competition 
equal to its own caliber. 

John J. McGroarty '58 

Walter Green must have been suffering 
from an acute fit of pique when he wrote 
his recent letter attacking Columbia's 
plans to build a new gymnasium, for what 
else could aScount for his eagerness to 
lay this country's ills at the doorstep of 
intercollegiate athletics? I grant that too 
often the attitude of many universities 
toward their student-athletes has been less 
than edifying, but to link Columbia's new 
gym to those attitudes and then finally 
to the problems of our society is to offer, 
at best, a hopelessly convoluted argument. 

Furthermore, Mr. Green has quite obvi¬ 
ously missed to whole point of the new 
gym which is to provide the Columbia 
community with an adequate physical 
recreation facility. To deny that such a 
facility is badly needed, is to deny that 
physical recreation is vital to the well 
being of most Columbia men, not to 
mention lesser mortals. It is to deny that 
people with plenty of intellectual capacity 
often find real satisfaction in athletic 
activity. In fact, many find it an essential 
part of their lives. 

That Mr. Green does not appreciate the 
importance of physical activity is under¬ 
standable, but what is not understandable 
is that he should try to prejudice the case 
against the new gym by invoking argu¬ 
ments that are devoid of substance. 

Bennett Miller '59 


64 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




Up-to-Date 

I was delighted to read the Fall 1970 issue 
of Columbia College Today. It is good to 
see that the magazine is finally making 
an effort to present an accurate and 
up-to-date picture of what is going on at 
Columbia. For too many years the 
magazine was devoted to confirming 
misconceptions entertained by some of 
the older alumni. It is an indication of the 
College's confidence and trust in these 
alumni that Columbia College Today is 
now willing to tell them a straighter story. 

William H. McDavid '68 


Ted Gold 

Ted Gold '68, whose death was perfunc¬ 
torily reported in the obituary column of 
the Summer 1970 edition of your maga¬ 
zine, was a revolutionary who was 
dedicated to the struggle to build a new 
world based on equality, peace and 
freedom. His life was worth a thousand 
times more than those of the real estate 
brokers, judges, professors and lawyers 
whose deaths are reported in considerable 
detail on the same obituary page. Ted 
Gold lives! Power to the people! 

Allen Young '62 


Intransigence 

I enjoyed reading the Summer 1970 issue 
of Columbia College Today— especially the 
article by J. Chambers on Columbia during 
WW I. Comparing this period with the 
Columbia outbreaks in the Springs of 
1968 and 1970 yields some interesting 
results. What came out rather loud and 
clear was that the intransigence of 
President N. M. Butler and the faculty in 
favor of WW I (with the students following 
dutifully along) was matched by the 
current intransigence of the students in 
1968 and 1970 (with the President and 
many of the faculty following along this 
year). 

Although there may have been some 
improvements in 1970 over the adminis¬ 
tration of 1968, with its unfortunate 
appointment of the so-called "Westin 
Committee" of the faculty, strong issue 
must be taken with then-President 
Cordier, who, together with other mem¬ 
bers of the faculty and the administration, 
officially resolved against Cambodia and 
took the unfortunate act of announcing 
that University facilities would be utilized 
"for effective anti-war activity." 

Just as the University was terribly wrong 
in acting on one side of the war issue in 
1918, the University was equally wrong for 
acting on the other side of that issue by 
attempting to commit the University as an 
institution on a question of national 
policy—regardless of the personal beliefs 
of its employees and the opposite 
pressures to which they were subjected. 
We still need bigger men at Columbia— 
if they can be found. 

W. Noel Keyes '43 


Dissent 

I disagree completely with you. The 
campus should not be made a political 
battleground. 

B. S. Troedsson '27 


Transfiguration 

Either Lou Kusserow looked a lot like my 
Columbia roommate and friend, Peter 
DeBlasio, or you had the wrong photo for 
the "Gold Dust Twins," on page 49 of the 
fall issue. That partner of Gene 
Rossides sure looks a lot like Peter. 

Roland E. Kuniholm '51 
EDITOR'S NOTE: You're right. 


Ind-cent L-nguage 

I think the fall 1970 issue of Columbia 
College Today would have been one of 
the finest issues yet published. However, 
"Everyone's Gone Crazy" more than 
nullifies all the plaudits fot the other 
articles. I think it is shocking that the 
author used such very bad taste in 
repeating a vile word in his dispatch, even 
though he was quoting verbatim. 

On completing the reading of the articles 
before this one I thought my nephew, a 
high school sophomore, might like to see 
Columbia College Today , so I planned to 
put it in his hands. Now I shall not let him 
see it. How could I when it contains such 
indecent language? 

I have always and everywhere sung the 
praises of alma mater and shall continue 
to do so in spite of such things as this. 
Why did you and the author not censor 
the use of such a vulgar word? Why did 
you print it? 

How dare you and how dare the author of 
this article! 

Philip T. Moore '23 


The Persuaders 

There is a photograph on page 68 of the 
Fall issue of Columbia College Today 
incorrectly captioned "UNFRIENDLY 
PERSUASION: Police arrest a demonstrator 
at a political rally." 

The photograph should properly be 
captioned "So-called police beat up a 
citizen," inasmuch as (1) there is no 
evidence in the photo that the gang of 
men (?) shown in the photograph are 
actually members of the police force; nor 
any way to individually identify them, 

(2) there is no indication at all of anyone 
being "arrested," as legally defined, but 
rather of physical violence being inflicted 
on a citizen whose back is turned,-and, 
finally (3) the so-called demonstrator was 
actually a citizen on his way back to work 
from lunch who tried to secure medical 
help from the police for another citizen 
who was lying badly beaten and severely 
bleeding on the sidewalk of Fun City. 

I request that you print a correction to 
the caption in your next issue. 

Louis Lionni 


Wonderful Moments 

Your Once Upon a Time story, Columbia 
vs. Princeton, made wonderful reading, 
but there was another "wonderful 
moment," Columbia's upset of Army in 
the Polo Grounds in 1925, maybe it was 
1926, but no matter it was wonderful. . 
George Pease was Columbia's quarterback, 
and what a job he did. Both Spectator 
and the downtown press featured this 
victory as Columbia's most significant 
since intercollegiate competition had 
been reinstated on Morningside Heights. 
The score, if I remember rightly, was 21-7 
Columbia. Columbia's Student Employ¬ 
ment Office recruited ushers with free 
admission to the game as the principal 
stipend, and I drew a section on the Army 
side, in the section reserved for the Army 
Band in attendance (not a cadet band) and 
my cheers for Columbia made me so 
obnoxious that the band leader instructed 
his cohorts to spread out and thus unseat 
me from the seat on the end of a row, and 
I cheered the rest of the time from a seat 
on a cold concrete step. 

J. E. Cowie '29 

Feckless Slobs 

Some issues back Columbia College 
Today featured an account of the riots that 
fractured Columbia. 

The editor illuminated the day-to-day 
events for those of us watching in dismay 
at a distance. Performing a valuable 
service he named names—both faculty and 
student, chronicled their actions in deed 
and word, exposed the phony issues which 
screened the root purpose. It was a 
brilliant depiction of the anatomy of 
student riots everywhere. 

Shortly, this man was accused of being an 
anti-semite—in Fun City a charge more 
heinous than matricide. After that, he was 
replaced as editor. A neat piece of reverse 
McCarthyism! 

The Fall 1970 issue of the same magazine 
begins with a mewling editorial by his 
replacement deploring an administration 
guideline that political groups which use 
University facilities will have to pay for 
them. Where, he asks, will the Young 
Socialists obtain the $58.50 to rent 
Harkness? He anguishes over the violent 
response this policy may provoke. 

I would go further. Meetings for the 
purpose of political propaganda should 
not be held within the University at all — 
for pay or free — regardless of the 
sponsoring organization. 

Columbia used to be a respected, even 
loved, institution of learning. More 
recently it has become a haven for drug 
culture devotees, Marxists and feckless 
slobs whose devotion to learning is 
minuscule. It will continue so as long as 
the abject permissiveness typified by this 
editorial continues to represent the 
rudderless non-policy of those in authority 
at Columbia. 

Enough is too much! 

Omar Legant '35 


LETTERS 


65 









_ ..Columbia 
College 
Today 

Room 336 • 632 West 125th Street 
New York, New York 10027 

Address Correction Requested 


THE COLUMBIANA LIBRARY 
210 LOW MEMORIAL LIBRARY,,,, 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEW YORK N Y 10027 


1 


Non-Profit Organization 
U.S. Postage 

PAID 


New York, N.Y. 
PERMIT NO. 3593 




ANDREW AMES 





























SUMMER 1971 





















Surprised 

I am a recently admitted student to the 
Class of 1975. I am truly looking forward 
to attending Columbia. Recently, I was 
given a copy of Columbia College Today 
by my guidance office. The Spring issue 
was interesting reading. I found the 
viewpoints within the various articles at 
once refreshing and surprising: refreshing 
to hear an honest opinion and constructive 
criticism and surprising to read it in an 
alumni magazine. 

Irving Schenkler 


Columbia Forum 

Columbia Forum was founded to replace 
the Columbia Alumni Magazine which 
had been published by the Alumni 
Federation. 

Columbia College Today was founded to 
replace the College class notes and news 
information previously carried by the 
Alumni Magazine. With Joe Coffee I was 
one of the founders. 

Wayne Van Orman '28 


Will to Perform 

It was sneaky of you to be less tardy than I. 
You got out another issue before 1 got 
around to responding to Mr. Walter Green 
'58 who said in the Fall 1970 CCT that he 
didn't care at all about the gym or inter¬ 
collegiate athletics, nor did any of the 
classmates whom he respected. 

Mr. Green obviously doesn't qualify for 
the "rounded man” diploma, but certainly 
he should have the perception to realize 
that the opportunity to exercise and 
compete and, yes, also root for one's 
school are definitely needs of 90 per cent 
of college-age men. 

Mr. John McGroarty '58 came to Mr. 
Green's defense in the Winter-Spring '71 
CCT, questioning Columbia alumni who 
become "genuinely unhappy if a Columbia 
team loses ... I urge Columbia to select 
competition equal to its own caliber." 
What unthinking balderdash! No sane 
Columbia alumnus, nor any reasonable 
human, believes that "winning is all that 
matters." No one is upset "if a Columbia 
team loses." One is upset if a Columbia 
team loses ALL THE TIME, even when 
playing in a league of its intellectual peers, 
all of whom are bound by a mutual agree¬ 
ment to pursue intercollegiate athletics on 
an amateur basis. 


Letters 


I don't think I'm twisting logic too much 
if I venture that "you are whom you play." 
We have an honored intellectual tradition 
at Columbia and we compete against 
schools of similar substance. 

Why then should we be consistently 
drubbed in certain sports? (and mind you, 
we hold our own in quite a few—basket¬ 
ball, fencing, tennis come to mind 
immediately). 

If we cannot compete athletically with our 
peer schools, if we must degrade our 
athletic schedules, is it too far-fetched to 
suspect that this could be a reflection of a 
parallel slippage in our academic achieve¬ 
ments? 

I'm not talking about winning all the time, 
or some of the time, or even once in a 
while. I'm talking about a swimming 
team (even Mr. Green will concede that 
swimming is a useful sport throughout life 
for competitors and non-competitors 
alike), that could not win a meet in two 
whole seasons, that was so inferior to its 
peers that it was forced to schedule 
schools that are not on Columbia's level as 
educational institutions, and was still 
walloped by them. 

The will to perform creditably, when it 
exists on the intellectual level, will be just 
as urgent when applied to other areas. 

Just as it is foolish to desire athletic 
excellence while performing like a slob 
intellectually, it is distasteful to achieve 
high academic results and perform like a 
slob in other areas. 

In 1972—albeit because of a scheduling 
emergency—the football team will play 
against a local team newly removed from 
the "club" football status. 

The swimming team, as I noted, has 
dropped several Ivy opponents in favor of 
some local teams. This "local" area is my 
home area; I have nothing against it. But 
the question remains, is Columbia to 
remain a great cosmopolitan institution, 
or is it going to fade into just another big 
university in a big city? 

Success in sports requires hard work, 
brains and pride. That's exactly what 
makes for success in intellectual 
endeavors. Athletics should never take 
priority over education, but it should 
maintain parallel standards. 

If Mr. McGroarty cares much about 
Columbia, he should examine the nuances 
of his statement that Columbia should 
"select competition equal to its own 
caliber." That's exactly what I'm saying. 

Charles K. Sergis '55 


Musclebound Philistinism 

Your choice of words in the second para¬ 
graph of "Off Broadway Closing" (Page 8, 
Winter-Spring 1971 issue) is inaccurate. 

The School of Dramatic Arts did not 
"founder" in 1958. It was killed by the 
razing of Brander Matthews Theatre to 
make way for the new School of Law 
without finding it other quarters. 

The pattern is not far different from the 
killing of the Theatre Arts Division of the 
School of the Arts in the present instance, 
with the excuse that the city is razing the 
old Women's Hospital building. 

A long time loyal alumnus must reluctantly 
conclude that it is indeed true Columbia 
has little respect for the arts, less for the 
performing arts and none at all for the art 
of the theatre. (Contrast this with the 
perennial furor over building bigger and 
better athletic facilities and teams to 
represent this great cultural/educational 
institution.) 

Let us admit that the practice of theatre is 
a laboratory rather than a lecture hall 
discipline. I see no evidence of an entire 
science curriculum being discarded 
because its laboratory requirements are 
more expensive than others. It would have 
been reasonable to require Theatre Arts to 
cut its budget in proportion to the other 
divisions of the University—or perhaps 
even a little more deeply—as is being done 
in some institutions in these financially 
difficult times. Obviously the University 
administration thought the theatre at 
Columbia had little enough support to 
safely permit its elimination. 

This may prove to be an error in judg¬ 
ment. Columbia, being as you point out at 
the very capital of the theatre world, has 
many alumni active and successful in that 
world. (Some of us, including personages 
of the stature of Richard Rodgers, served 
for years on more or less nominal com¬ 
mittees presumably devoted to the 
establishment of a preeminent theatre 
curriculum.) We do not take lightly Alma 
Mater's outdated pedagogical snobbism 
and/or perennial musclebound 
Philistinism. Nor will many more 
colleagues in related fields who now see 
all the arts at Columbia threatened by this 
first purging. 

Robert C. Schnitzer '27 

Executive Director 

Professional Theater Program 

The University of Michigan 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





1971 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE CENSUS 
INFORMATION FOR THE ALUMNI RECORDS 

Please return to Columbia College Census, 4 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036 

Name and Address Your Class 

□ y 

Is above address □ residence or □ business and your preferred mailing address 

□ no 

Alternative address (□ residence or □ business): 

Telephone numbers and area code: Residence: Business: 

Profession, company, organization, or military service with which you are concerned: 

Your Position: 

Other current connections (business directorships; civil, philanthropic, etc.), with offices held 

Columbia activities with dates (College Council, Annual Fund, Alumni Association, etc.): 

If married, give spouse's full name: 

No. of children: Girls- Boys- 

Ages- Ages- 


Miscellaneous publications, honors, special interests, etc.: 


















The most spectacular news on the nation's campuses this 
year has been the absence of large-scale disruptions. Knowledge¬ 
able observers derive no comfort from the phenomenon. The 
relative silence of today's students does not mean that they are 
any better accommodated to “the system" than the young men 
and women who stormed buildings in 1968. Rather, it reflects a 
growing disbelief that the system can either be improved from 
within or transformed by revolution. 

President William McGill summarized the prevailing mood 
when he said in a recent speech: 


No matter what you do the war, does not end, the 
racial antagonisms do not abate, the faculty does not 
care, and the administration is too busy playing up to 
alumni and trustees to listen to students' voices. It is all 
hopeless and useless. The only way to handle it is to 
draw into yourself and do what you can within the 
narrow dimensions of your own personality or the small 
group with which you travel. The radicals are hung up 
in petty ideological disputes. They try to trap you in 
their causes and you wind up getting busted while they 
go on to the next movement. To hell with it all! Noth¬ 
ing works; nothing means anything. 

The students who will enter college in the fall of 1971 have 
grown up with the war. They were in elementary school when 
the Senate enacted the Tonkin Bay resolution. They were high 
school freshmen when the Paris peace talks began, more than 
three years ago. Many of them have run the gamut of political 
experience, both conventional and radical, while still in their 
early teens. 

Their disenchantment with the fighting, and with the govern¬ 
ment's efforts to rationalize it, has led them to a more basic ques¬ 
tioning of American institutions and values. Such questioning 
was healthy, in that it uncovered evils which had not been gen¬ 
erally acknowledged—as long as the questioners believed that the 
evils could be remedied. Many no longer do. The activism- 
revolutionary and otherwise—of the 1960s has given way to intro¬ 
version, the optimism to quiet despair. 

It is now ten years and three Administrations since we sent 
troops to Vietnam. All that we have to show for those ten years is 
a generation of cynics. Millions of young Americans, outwardly 
unscarred, have become casualties of war. 

M.B.M. 


At the annual Convention of the American Alumni Council last month, Columbia College Today won the 
grand prize in The Atlantic Monthly competition for excellence in writing. We also 
received certificates of honorable mention for being among the top five entrants in the 
following categories: alumni content, student content, and editorial comment. 

Infrequency of publication rendered us ineligible to compete for the Sibley award 
(best alumni magazine), which our predecessor had virtually monopolized. 


_ ..Columbia 
College 

Today 

ALUMNI ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

EDITOR Martin B. Margulies '61 Ray Robjnson » 41 chairman 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR llene Barth Arthur Rothstein '35 

. __ ^ . r-u Edward Hamilton'42 

ART DIRECTOR C, Cordon Chapman Kermj , Lansner , 42 

SPORTS EDITOR Steve Singer '64 Walter Wager '44 

ASSISTANT EDITOR Larry Lane'70 P^ on . , D ° beli ' 4 ^ 

John McDermott 54 

Published by Columbia College 

Columbia University 

New York, N. Y. 10027 
for 

Alumni and Friends of Columbia College 

Address all editorial communications to: 
Columbia College Today 

400 West 118th Street 

New York, N. Y. 10027 

Telephone (212) 280-3701 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE 
founded in 1754 

is the undergraduate liberal arts college 
of 2,700 men in 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

IN THIS ISSUE 

Letters .Inside Front Cover 

Around the Quads . 2 

Tenure: Freeze or Squeeze?.14 

Roar Lion Roar. 19 

The Court Physician. 24 

An Old-Fashioned Spring. 28 

Talk of the Alumni. 30 

Another Angry Decade. 40 

Alumni Authors. 50 

Obituaries . 52 

View From The Bridge. 54 


























SURPRISE PARTY 

Federal officials who visited cam¬ 
pus last March to begin an investiga¬ 
tion of the employment status of 
women at Columbia received two sur¬ 
prises. 

Their first surprise was a hefty 
footnoted report aimed at document¬ 
ing widespread discrimination against 
women at the University. The report 
was presented to the government in¬ 
vestigators by a group of staff and 
faculty women — many of whom, as 
members of Columbia Women's Lib¬ 


eration, had been instrumental in its 
preparation. 

But even much more unexpected 
than the unofficial black paper was the 
administration's failure to submit its 
own statistics concerning female em¬ 
ployees. 

In order to keep federal contracts, 
the University is required to prepare 
an annual breakdown of its employ¬ 
ment picture for the Labor Depart¬ 
ment's Office of Federal Contract 
Compliance. The purpose of this pro¬ 
cedure is to ascertain whether an em¬ 
ployer provides equal job and promo¬ 
tion opportunities for persons regard¬ 


less of race, creed, or sex. An employer 
who is found to be derelict in any area 
must present a corrective plan, which 
must then be approved by the govern¬ 
ment. 

The University, which has rou : 
tinely supplied statistics to the Labor 
Department reflecting the distribution 
of minority group employees, had 
done no similar analysis of women 
workers. And before this past year it 
had never been challenged to show it 
did not discriminate on the basis of 
sex. 

The challenge came in May, 1970, 
when the Women's Equity Action 


4 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 











League (WEAL), acting on information 
supplied by Columbia Women's Lib¬ 
eration, filed a complaint with the 
government, charging Columbia Uni¬ 
versity with discrimination against 
women. 

"The University Administration 
had ample time to prepare a report 
about 'women," charges a spokes¬ 
woman from the Columbia liberation 
group, "but it hoped the investigators 
would do its work for it." 

Vice-President for Administration 
Warren Goodell, whose office is 
gathering the information for the gov¬ 
ernment, explains in rebuttal: "We 
couldn't really start until it was clear 
what the government wanted to 
know. And it takes time to do the job 
properly. The data in this University is 
in an awful mess." 

Assisting Goodell in preparing the 
report is equal employment officer 
Beverly Clark. Clark, who is black, was 
an assistant office supervisor at the 
medical school before stepping into 
the new post, the creation of which 
was announced just two days before 
the government investigators came to 
campus. 

While Labor Department officials 
await the University's official statistics, 
they should find interesting reading in 
the staff study prepared by angry Co¬ 
lumbia women. Their report declares 
that only one of the top 70 administra¬ 
tive positions at the University is held 
by a woman. On the lower rungs of 
the Employment ladder, the im¬ 
balance seems to be in the opposite 
direction. Over 98 per cent of Co¬ 
lumbia's secretarial-clerical staff is fe¬ 
male, and the authors maintain that 
"there is strong evidence that the 
number of women with B.A.s or 
higher degrees functioning at this 
level is disproportionate to (i.e. higher 
than) the national average." 

The staff study further alleges that 
men with degrees invariably hold 
more prestigious and higher paying 
administrative jobs than women with 
the same credentials. 

The paper charges, too, that in the 
area of maintenance services women 
dominate the lowest paying job cate¬ 
gory — maid — and are not employed 
at all at most of the higher paying 
levels. 

Appended to the comparative 
survey of administrative and support¬ 
ing staff positions filled by women are 


over 30 allegations of specific in¬ 
stances of sex discrimination. The 
complainants are all female. 

A copy of a report on discrimina¬ 
tion against women teachers at Co¬ 
lumbia, prepared last year by faculty 
members of Columbia Women's Lib¬ 
eration, was also given to the govern¬ 
ment inspectors. (This report was the 
basis of the complaint filed against 
Columbia by WEAL.) The faculty study 
points out that while Columbia grants 
26 per cent of its doctorates to 
women, only 2.10 per cent of its 
tenured faculty is female. 

High-ranking University adminis¬ 
trators (all male) have responded with 
varying degrees of caution to the 
women's accusations. 

Personnel Director Robert Adams 
notes that if discrimination against 
women is found to exist, the Univer¬ 
sity would be forced to revamp its 
policies in two areas: hiring and pro¬ 
motion. In that case, he says, "If there 
is a problem, we've solved part of it 
already, because we aren't filling any 
jobs in the administration." 

President William McGill places 
the charges of discrimination against 
women at the University in a larger 
context. "The traditional structures of 
society that accord status to certain 
elements of society are under attack," 
the President declares. "And women 
are now beginning to challenge the 
structures that exclude them. 

"You can't prove sexism by sta¬ 
tistics, but statistics do point to certain 
questions. The fact that there are many 
women graduate students here, for 
example, is not reflected in the 
faculty." 

Frankest of all the administrators 
is Dean of the College Carl Hovde. "I 
think," concedes Hovde, "that a fair 
number of complaints are justified. 
Clearly, you can indict not just this 
institution but almost any other from 
top to bottom." He adds, however, 
that opportunities for women are 
greater today than at any time in the 
past, due largely to the activities of 
militant women's groups. "The pres¬ 
sure of the women's movement has 
made us all more aware of the situa¬ 
tion of women in the academic com¬ 
munity," the Dean explains. "I 
wouldn't hire any person simply be¬ 
cause she was a woman, but I see no 
barrier to a woman's receiving any job 
in the University." 


NEW ALLIANCE 

"Music, Free Beer, Girls" pro¬ 
claimed a bright red and white poster 
advertising a business school mixer. 
Twenty-four hours later the an¬ 
nouncement had been amended. In 
big black letters the words "and Boys" 
had been added. 

No one in Uris Hall seemed to 
know who had made the alteration, 
but its meaning was clear to all: the 
feminists had struck again. If girls were 
bait to lure males to a party, then 
surely business school boys should be 
advertised, along with music and free 
beer, to attract women. 

The addition of two words was 
just not one more coy ploy in the 
ancient battle between the sexes. For 
today at Columbia, men and women 
do not stand on opposite sides of the 
scrimmage line. Instead, female and 
male liberationists are aligned to¬ 
gether against the "traditionalists" or 
"male chauvinists." The feminist who 
scrawled "and Boys" may well have 
been a man. 

Messages from the contemporary 
women's movement have fallen on re¬ 
ceptive ears, particularly in the Col¬ 
lege. At a time when youth is exalting 
the personal response to situations 
and society, this'is not surprising. It is 
difficult to be genuinely concerned 
about the quality and straight-for¬ 
wardness of human relationships and 
still regard all Barnard women as in¬ 
herently inferior—both to College 
classmates and Vassar girls. 

The clues to changes in attitudes 
towards women are varied and some¬ 
times subtle. Teachers who instruct 
classes which include Barnard stu¬ 
dents still make jokes about women 
but they often do so self-consciously— 
"with apologies to women's lib." 
Laughter does not always follow. 
There are also indications that some 
Columbia men are not averse to doing 
"women's work." During a week-end 
women's conference held on campus 
last March, College students helped 
man three all-day child care centers. 
Along with a few husbands from the 
community, the Columbia men dia¬ 
pered infants, cooked for moppets, 
and generally kept over 50 children 
entertained and reasonably clean. 

Spectator on more than one occa¬ 
sion has aroused the wrath of Colum¬ 
bia women and their supporters. A 


AROUND THE QUADS 


5 









THE HANDS THAT ROCK THE CRADLE: Nick Shannon '74 and Richard Barth, 
husband of CCT's associate editor, care for tots while 
women attend liberation conference. 


review written by General Studies stu^- 
dent Richard Leary of female director 
Barbara Loden's film, Warida, ended 
with faint praise: "Despite some major 
flaws and her own pretentious ration¬ 
ale, Barbara Loden has made a pretty 
good little film. For a girl." 

Before campus women's groups 
had time to meet to fife bff a letter of 
complaint, an angry response to the 
Leary article appeared in Spectator. 
The reply, authored by College soph- 
more Brian Berkey, from Tulsa, Okla¬ 
homa, referred to the offending re¬ 
view as "chauvinist crap." . 

Leary, elaborating on his remarks 
at a subsequent interview, acknowl¬ 
edged: "I wouldn't deny that I'm a 
male chauvinist. I enjoy shocking peo¬ 
ple." Men who took offense, he de¬ 
clared, were "trying to play Sir Gala- 
had." Retorted Berkey: "I don't think 
people are shocked. They're just dis¬ 
gusted. Most of the guys I know have 
spent a lot of time gaining conscious¬ 
ness of how people relate to one an¬ 


other individually, and how classes 
treat other classes." 

Questionnaires filled out earlier 
this year by 100 Columbia freshmen, 
selected at random, suggest that many 
Columbia men are indeed more dis¬ 
gusted than shocked by anti-women 
remarks, particularly lewd ones. The 
question-sheets were specifically de¬ 
signed to elicit freshman reactions to 
the orientation program last fall. For 
many years, one of the leading fea¬ 
tures of orientation week has been 
King's Crown Activities Night, during 
which the various extracurricular or¬ 
ganizations attempt to attract new 
members. Recently, however, KCA 
Night has been transformed. In place 
of the staid presentations of the 1950s, 
many of the activities have tried to 
outdo their competitors in the use of 
obscene sexual jokes. Scantily clad 
girls have appeared in the skits, while 
upperclassmen made pitches about 
the sexual rewards of joining a par¬ 
ticular society or publication, or else 


warned their audiences about the 
"Barnyard pigs" across Broadway. 
Needless to say, although all KCA 
activities are open to Barnard stu¬ 
dents, the women were not invited to 
KCA Night. 

More than half of the respondents 
to the questionnaire indicated that 
they had found KCA Night neither en¬ 
joyable nor enlightening. Specific 
comments on the evening included 
"pandering, sexist," "most tasteless 
junk imaginable," and "highly exploi¬ 
tive of sex and women." The majority 
of the freshmen not only believed that 
the KCA stag evening should be 
dropped, but recommended also that 
orientation week become co-educa- 
tional. And this fall it will be. 

A co-educational student com¬ 
mittee headed by Leslie Mazza '73B 
and Keith Addis '72 has revamped 
freshman orientation into a program 
that will emphasize "getting people 
together." KCA night will give way to 
a Clubs Carnival at Macintosh, the 


6 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


ANNA PELLEGRINO 







new Barnard student center. An in¬ 
formal barbecue on South Field will 
probably replace the traditional for¬ 
mal banquet for College freshmen. All 
non-academic orientation activities 
will be open to Barnard, Engineering, 
and Columbia students. 

Addis hopes that the new orienta¬ 
tion program will "give men and 
women a chance to meet, and to get 
to know people before everyone hi¬ 
bernates for the winer. Half the guys 
around here never see a girl. We for¬ 
get how to deal with them. We can do 
a lot to improve the vibes by getting 
a people-thing started during orienta¬ 
tion." 

Upperclassmen who never see a 
woman will also have a chance to re¬ 


verse that sorry trend this autumn. 
Two dormitories, Livingston Hall and 
616 West 116th Street (a Barnard resi¬ 
dence), will become co-educational 
in September. Tenants for the two 
buildings were selected from a pool of 
men and women who opted for co-ed 
arrangements. 

In 616 West 116th Street, one 
suite per floor will be occupied by Co¬ 
lumbia students. Four floors in Livings¬ 
ton will house both sexes. 

A poll taken next Spring might 
illuminate the issues raised in the 
Leary-Berkey controversy. Are Co¬ 
lumbia men feminists, male-chauvin¬ 
ists, or Sir Galahads? The Barnard ex¬ 
perimenters in co-ed living would be 
the ones to ask. 


THEY BOTH WEAR THE PANTS: Do dress-alikes 
symbolize the growing equality 
between the sexes? 


DRAWING 
THE LINE 

Student dissidents waited until 
February before giving President Wil¬ 
liam McGill his baptism of fire, and 
even then the disturbances were mild 
compared to the massive disruptions 
of previous years. Puerto Rican mili¬ 
tants, dissatisfied with the content and 
staffing of a Puerto Rican history 
course, shouted the professor down 
during his first lecture, then boycotted 
two subsequent classes when security 
guards were stationed outside the 
room. 

The roots of the controversy go 
back to the fall of 1969, when Kemp- 
ton E. Webb, Director of the Institute 
for Latin American Studies, visited the 
University of Puerto Rico. There he 
discussed with Professor Arturo Mo¬ 
rales Carrion plans for a course, at 
Columbia, in Puerto Rican history. 
There had been no demand for such 
a course, but, as Webb explained af¬ 
terward, "we wanted to anticipate 
one." 

In the spring of 1970, Morales 
Carrion delivered three lectures on 
the campus. Attendance ran from 
about five at the first session to about 
20 at the third. There was also some 
mild heckling of the professor, and 
at the final meeting radical students 
passed out leaflets attacking him. 

The response, though hardly over¬ 
whelming, encouraged Webb and 
Morales Carrion to proceed with a 
full semester course the following 
spring. The history department agreed 
to sponsor it, and the Institute under¬ 
took to pay the professor's salary. 
Original plans called for Morales Car¬ 
rion to commute from Puerto Rico 
every other week, with a graduate as¬ 
sistant taking over on alternate weeks. 

Arturo Morales Carrion's creden¬ 
tials were impressive. Raised in Puerto 
Rico, he studied at Columbia College 
for a year before taking his B.A. at the 
University of Puerto Rico in 1935. He 
earned his Ph.D. in Latin American 
Studies at Columbia, where he was a 
pupil of Carleton H. Hayes, Jacques 
Barzun, and Frank Tannenbaum. He 
has taught at the University of Puerto 
Rico, the University of Miami, and 
George Washington University, and 
25 years ago offered the first Cqlum- 


AROUND THE QUADS 


7 












didn't want some radical scholar to 
teach it," said one. "It's fine for peo¬ 
ple to make up their own minds. But 
Morales Carrion's presentation would 
be highly biased, and these biases 
would be passed on to students who 
have no basis for discernment." The 
protesters demanded that other speak¬ 
ers, of their own choosing, be invited 
to lecture during the alternate weeks 
when Morales Carrion would be ab¬ 
sent. 

Morales Carrion demurred. "He 
felt," observed a colleague, "that it 
was his course." He also objected to 
all but a few of the proposed lecturers, 
most of whom, he declared, were not 
historians. (Eventually, the Institute of¬ 
fered the militants money to organize 
a lecture series of their own. They ac¬ 
cepted, but never came forward with 
a list of speakers.) 

Another complaint was that the 
professor didn't spend enough time 
with his students. Morales Carrion re¬ 
sponded by meeting classes every 
Monday instead of every other Mon¬ 
day, and by making himself available 
through dinner until late in the eve¬ 
ning. 

"He became more human," one 
radical leader conceded. "But that 
wasn't the issue." The issue, the stu¬ 
dent explained, was more basic: 

"He's the super-scholarly type. I 
don't relate to that." 

President McGill, meanwhile, 
viewed the incident (together with an 
unrelated trashing episode outside the 
School of International Affairs later 
that week) as "the first instance in 
which I was being tested." He reacted 
accordingly. The following Monday, 
he issued a strong statement con¬ 
demning disorders and asking Uni¬ 
versity Senate to support him. That 
same afternoon, as Professor Morales 
Carrion prepared to meet his class for 
the second time, security guards were 
posted at the door to exclude out¬ 
siders. Several administrators were 
present, including McGill. Four per¬ 
sons were barred from the room, and 
others walked out in protest. 

The following Monday, student 
and faculty negotiators thought they 
had reached an agreement for the 
guards' removal. Somewhere along 
the line, however, there was a mis¬ 
understanding, and as students ap¬ 
proached the classroom at one p.m. 
they were astonished to find eight 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


bia College course in Latin American 
civilization. He has authored six books 
and a spate of articles and essays. 

He has also served as a special 
advisor to the Secretary-General of 
the Organization of American States, 
and as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of 
State during the Kennedy administra¬ 
tion. And therein lay the nub of the 
problem. 

The first class met on February 8. 
Morales Carrion had scarcely intro¬ 
duced himself before he was inter¬ 
rupted by hecklers, all of whom were 
Puerto Rican, and many of whom 
were not enrolled in the class. They 
accused him of favoring statehood for 
Puerto Rico ("Anyone who knows me 
knows I'm for commonwealth," re¬ 
plies Morales Carrion); of having sent 
the Marines to Santo Domingo ("I had 
nothing to do with the State Depart¬ 
ment in those days, and I was critical 
of that decision"); and of being re¬ 


sponsible for the fact that University 
of Puerto Rico courses are taught in 
English ("With the exception of main¬ 
land professors, all teaching there is 
done in Spanish.") 

Professor Morales Carrion is a 
dedicated scholar who believes that 
"Universities should offer a detached 
view of society, or, if not entirely de¬ 
tached, one which should offer the 
longer perspective." He is not a man 
to roll up his sleeves and engage in 
verbal slugfests with angry militants. 
After hasty discussions with University 
representatives, who had been alerted 
to possible trouble and were waiting 
outside the room, he dismissed the 
class. 

During subsequent negotiations, 
student dissidents expressed resent¬ 
ment that neither they nor members 
of the Puerto Rican community in 
New York City had been consulted 
about the structure of the course. "We 


STORM-CENTER: The appointment of Prof. Arturo Morales 
Carrion to teach a course in Puerto Rican history 
aroused bitter controversy. 





helmeted officers standing near the 
entrance. This time, ten students re¬ 
fused to go inside. 

Senate's response to the incident 
was somewhat more ambiguous than 
the President's. It tabled a strongly 
worded measure introduced by Pro¬ 
fessor Quentin Anderson, and adopt¬ 
ed instead a milder resolution calling 
upon "all members of the University 
to refrain from acts of a violent, coer¬ 
cive or destructive nature," and urg¬ 
ing the administration "to take all 
necessary and proper steps to restrain 
outside persons, organizations or 
agencies from interfering in the edu¬ 
cational processes of the University." 
The vote was 53 to six, with 14 absen- 
tions. At least one dissenter, Vice 
President for Administration Warren 
Goodell, explained that he voted 
against the resolution because he 
didn't consider it strong enough. But 
McGill, who earlier had denounced 
the tabling of the Anderson proposal, 
declared himself satisfied with Sen¬ 
ate's action. 

Whether because the President's 
stand achieved its desired effect, or 
because students were satisfied with 
the offer of a lecture series, there 
were no further disruptions of Mo¬ 
rales Carrion's classes. But attendance 
fell off badly, and the course will not 
be offered again next year. "It was a 
one-shot deal anyway," says Webb, 
who acknowledges, however, that it 
might have been repeated if interest 
had been higher. Some dispute his 
contention that the poor response re¬ 
flects lack of interest in the subject- 
matter. "Perhaps," offered one his¬ 
torian, "we should try something 
more sociological, more involved 
with contemporary problems. The 
Puerto Rican community is here, and 
we'll have to make some kind of re¬ 
sponse to it, if a modified one." 

To all parties, Morales Carrion 
was a symbol. "This is the only course 
in Puerto Rican studies at Columbia," 
explained a student. "We had to show 
that Columbia shouldn't create such a 
course without consulting Puerto Ri¬ 
can students and the Puerto Rican 
community in the city." "He's hold¬ 
ing the line for everyone," said Kemp- 
ton Webb. "If you yield on him, then 
who's next?" The result was a con¬ 
frontation which left no one particu¬ 
larly happy, the symbol himself least 
of all. 


TAKING OFF 

During his chairmanship of the 
Political Science Department, a post 
he has just vacated, Professor Wayne 
Wilcox tried to make sure that all 
of the "senior people in the depart¬ 
ment" taught courses in the College. 

Wilcox has nothing but the high¬ 
est regard for College students: "They 
are very, very bright, many of them are 
much brighter than I am. And give 
them something worthwhile to do and 
they'll work like dogs." Professor Wil¬ 
cox never takes attendance: "That 
would be insulting." 

Nevertheless, Professor Wilcox 
became involved in an unprecedented 
situation at Columbia, in which he was 
called on the carpet by a student on 
the College Committee on Instruc¬ 
tion and publicly criticized by Execu¬ 
tive Vice-President Polykarp Kusch for 
having missed about half of his ses¬ 
sions with his College class. 

Last fall, when he was teaching an 
undergraduate course on international 
affairs, Wilcox had two opportunities 
to do research abroad, in Western 
Europe and the Soviet Union. He 
availed himself of both. He secured 
temporary leave from Dean of Facul¬ 
ties George Fraenkel, and arranged 
with colleagues to take over his 
classes. Then he left. 

Early the following semester, pri¬ 
marily at the instigation of Robert 
Fuhrman '71—an A-student in Wilcox's 
class who will attend the Harvard 
Business School next fall—and College 
Committee on Instruction member 
Michael Orenstein '71, Wilcox was in¬ 
vited to defend his absences. He did. 
He maintained that he had arranged 
for coverage, made himself available 
for consultation with his students, and 
personally graded each piece of writ¬ 
ten work; and he argued that the trips 
were essential to his professional ca¬ 
reer. 

Dissatisfied, the students brought 
their complaint to Dean Carl F. Hovde, 
who, though Dean of the College, had 
not been consulted about the leaves. 
Finally, Vice-President Kusch was 
asked to adjudicate the issue. 

"You know, they have a legiti¬ 
mate case," Kusch told Wilcox. 

"I know," the professor replied. 

In the middle of May, Kusch an¬ 
nounced his decision. He recom- 


AROUND THE QUADS 

























mended more clearly defined pro¬ 
cedures for the granting of leaves. He 
decided that although Professor Wil¬ 
cox had "acted in good faith through¬ 
out," his course was "less valuable to 
students than it might have been." 
And he closed the case without taking 
any formal action against Wilcox. 

That a professor should be pub¬ 
licly chastised by a vice-president was 
unheard of; that he should be publicly 
taken to task by his students for neg¬ 
lecting them was. equally unprece¬ 
dented. "I was profoundly moved by 
their sincerity," Wilcox said. "I don't 
think I would have had the guts to do 
the same thing if I were in their place." 

What was not unusual, however, 
was for a professor to miss classes in 
order to engage in outside activities— 
especially a professor of political sci¬ 
ence. There is a faculty member, now 
in the University administration, who 
was, well, notorious for not showing 
up for lectures. Seven years ago, Pro¬ 
fessor Richard Neustadt spent half a 
semester in England doing research 
and consulting for the Kennedy Ad¬ 
ministration on the Skybolt crisis. His 
graduate course on the Presidency 
(open to undergraduates) was taken 
over by a distinguished professor from 
N.Y.U. whose approach to the Presi¬ 
dency was not so much contradictory 
to Neustadt's as it was irrelevant to 
it. The students received half of two 
worthwhile but mutually exclusive 
courses. If they were also in the course 
on the Congress, they were treated to 
an excellent presentation by the as¬ 
sistant of the listed professor. The list¬ 
ed faculty member spent most of his 
time at the Ford Foundation, and was 
in the estimation of most students 
significantly less effective in the class¬ 
room than his junior partner. 

The major issue raised last spring 
was: if forced to choose, does a fac¬ 
ulty member assign his first priority 
to teaching or to research? Wilcox 
likes his students and he likes to teach. 
"There are no more interesting people 
than students," he says, "except poli¬ 
ticians." Yet, as seriously as he takes 
his teaching, Professor Wilcox would 
not want to be placed in a position 
where he could not avail himself of 
research opportunities as they arose. 
"I am a scholar-teacher," he said. "If 
I had it to do over again, I would have 
done some things differently, but I 
would have tried to make both those 


trips. There was no substitute for my 
not being in residence but the stu¬ 
dents were not the only ones who 
were screwed. I have a wife and four 
children." 

Wilcox had only good things to 
say about his students. ("I didn't real¬ 
ize how important they thought my 
presence was.") Noticeably absent 
were any feelings of ill-will. 

Some of his students felt the same 
way. They called him a "great pro¬ 
fessor," "quite fine" and "creative." 
(The high point of the course was the 
"gaming," by the students, of an imag¬ 
inary crisis in the Middle East. Wilcox 
was absent for those performances.) 

Some, on the other hand, did not. 
One called him a "performer, not an 
instructor." Another said, "It doesn't 
take much to get him to stop lecturing 
and start telling stories." 

The student course evaluation 
guide suggested that "it would have 
been wonderful had Professor Wilcox 
permitted his students to accompany 
him on his overseas excursions." 

Such "excursions" will probably 
occur less often in the future. College 
leave-taking procedures have been 
clarified, and even a teacher who 
spends most of his time in the gradu¬ 
ate school must consult with Dean 
Hovde if he wishes to miss under¬ 
graduate classes. But there will be no 
specific guidelines for resolving con¬ 
flicts between teaching and research. 
"That," says Hovde, "would be an in¬ 
sult to the teachers." 

HOLDING 
OUR OWN 

"We held our own," said Admis¬ 
sions Director Michael Lacopo. "These 
days, that's not bad." 

Actually, Columbia did better 
than hold its own in the annual scram¬ 
ble for Ivy League talent. Figures re¬ 
leased by the Admissions Office reveal 
that the College is one of just three 
Ivy League schools — Dartmouth and 
Cornell are the others —whose ap¬ 
plications rose since 1970. Signifi¬ 
cantly, Columbia is the only one lo¬ 
cated in a large city. Lacopo is pleased 
that Columbia continues to attract ap¬ 
plicants in spite of the well-publicized 
problems which afflict urban cam¬ 
puses. 


However, the College still ranks 
near the bottom in total number of 
applications. It is also forced to accept 
more applicants per place available 
than most of its Ivy League competi¬ 
tors. This means that Columbia ex¬ 
pects relatively large numbers of high 
school seniors to refuse its offer of 
admission. Lacopo blames the situa¬ 
tion on inadequate financial aid. 

"We're forced," he declares, "to 
admit people who we know won't 
come because we don't have enough 
money for them." (It is considered 
improper to deny admission to a can¬ 
didate on financial grounds.) "Admit- 
Denys" — young men who are ac¬ 
cepted into the College but refused 
any financial assistance whatsoever — 
are up from 40 last year to an ominous 
100. Moreover, financial aid packages, 
even when awarded, are often mani¬ 
festly not enough. "Our most attrac¬ 
tive offer includes $1,000 in self-help," 
Lacopo points out. "Harvard frequent¬ 
ly requires no self-help at all." Is it any 
wonder, he concludes, that Columbia 
lost about 100 applicants to Harvard? 

"We're not just losing people to 
the other Ivies," the director adds. 
"Some are going to demonstrably in¬ 
ferior schools." The principal bene¬ 
ficiaries of the nation-wide financial 
squeeze have been, of course, the 
state universities, with their low tui¬ 
tion and proximity to home. 

Applications from members of 
minorities — Blacks, Latins, Asians— re¬ 
mained fairly constant compared to 
1970, except in the case of Latins, 
where the figure rose from 136 to 225. 
Admissions officers attribute the in¬ 
crease to intensified recruitment 
efforts on the part of the Latin Ameri¬ 
can Students' Organization. Many of 
the applications were never com¬ 
pleted, however, and as a result the 
Class of '75 will probably contain no 
more Latin students than the Class of 
'74. Admissions figures for the other 
groups also underwent no significant 
changes. In all, at least 70 Blacks, 35 
Latins, and 33 Asians are expected to 
register in'the fall, adding up to about 
20 per cent of the freshman class. 

That class, which will number 
some 730 students, will also include its 
usual share of outstanding achievers. 
Already it boasts Yo Yo Ma, one of the 
nation's most accomplished cellists, 
and Paul Zuckerman, the youngest 
person ever to run for elective office 


10 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










in Denver, Colorado. Zuckerman had 
sought a seat on the local school 
board. "If he'd won," grinned Lacopo, 
"we'd have lost him." Fortunately — 
for Columbia, that is —the candidate 
was disqualified because of his age. A 
sign of the times is that six returning 
veterans have promised to register. 
Previous freshman classes rarely con¬ 
tained more than one returning vet¬ 
eran, Lacopo said. 

ZOO STORY 

Many Barnard students, quantum 
physics majors with nine o'clock 
exams, and denizens of 114th Street 
would agree that there have been ani¬ 
mals in the Columbia dormitories for 
years. But now the flocks of two- 
legged animals are being augmented 
by hordes of furred, feathered, and ... 
yech . . . scaly things. 

The Residence Halls Office and 
dorm counselors have relaxed their 
enforcement of the rule against pets. 
As a result, increasing numbers of 
dorm dwellers are seeking non-human 
companionship. Although dogs and 
cats are most common, one student 
keeps a pair of gerbils in his bottom 
desk drawer and visits them during 
study breaks, while a freshman foot¬ 
ball player shares his quarters with a 
boa constrictor. A graduate student 
even ran an exotic animal wholesale 
business from his dormitory room in 
John Jay, where he peddled such en¬ 
dearing specimens as rattlesnakes and 
scorpions. He has since moved to an 
apartment, much to the relief of the 
cleaning ladies. 

Owen Isaacs, the assistant dean 
for residence, renders careful lip serv¬ 
ice to the official policy that "animals 
are not encouraged," while acknowl¬ 
edging that "having a living creature 
in a room makes it feel more like 
home." But Isaacs draws the line. One 
freshman left school after the assistant 
dean excluded his pet, a very poison¬ 
ous snake. "Poisonous animals are not 
allowed in places where people live," 
explains Isaacs reasonably. 

A cat-owner in Hartley describes 
the companionship offered by his 
room-mate, who has since been exiled 
to New Jersey: "At night, the cat used 
to jump into my bed and suck my 
fingers." Although dogs have to be 
walked, and occasionally make mis¬ 



takes, cats are relatively clean, pre¬ 
senting other problems. "I got used to 
the smell of the litter box in here," the 
cat-owner recalls, "but anyone else 
who walked into the room was 
amazed." 

Why maintain pets under such ad¬ 
verse conditions? Besides the usual 
reasons, there are some extraordinary 
explanations. "The humming of the 
compressor helps me sleep at night, 
and makes me feel as if someone else 
is in the room," offers one John Jay 
freshman who keeps fish. 

A tenant of Hartley explains that 
usually an entire floor will take an in¬ 
terest in a pet, thereby promoting har¬ 
mony and a sense of community. He 
notes that Carman and John Jay, which 
provide the most sterile and depress¬ 
ing living conditions, also account for 
more pets than any other residence 
hall. The large number of big dogs to 
be found in the dorms suggests an¬ 
other possibility—protection. But then 
again, "a very poisonous snake" or a 
boa constrictor could provide protec¬ 
tion as well. 

SNAKE-EYES: Freshman Richard 
Manfredi huddles with his room¬ 
mate, ]im Bean. Mr. Bean is 
a boa constrictor. 


GOOD-BYE 
TO ALL THAT 

For many Columbia alumni, the 
term "service society" conjures im¬ 
ages of exhausting and humiliating 
interviews, three-piece suits and bow- 
ties, vicious political infighting, and 
service to the Columbia community as 
enervating as throwing a dance or 
shaking the hand of a dean. 

Ted Kremer was the youngest of 
the three service societies (Blue Key 
and Van Am are the others). Alone 
among the three, it accepted any can¬ 
didate willing to work and "serve" the 
campus. 

As the meaning of relevant service 
shifted, Blue Key and Van Am lum¬ 
bered on, changing insignificantly like 
Lamarckian dinosaurs, while Ted Kre¬ 
mer abolished its annual dance, aban¬ 
doned the pretense of maintaining a 
commuters' mail room, and began— 
before either of the others—to accept 
probates from Barnard. 

The Ted Kremer Course guide, an 
informative and methodical evalua¬ 
tion of most Columbia and Barnard 
courses, matured from an amateur 
mimeograph job to a polished, scien¬ 
tific instrument of education. 

It was therefore a shock to out¬ 
siders when, in February, the retiring 
actives and incoming active class 
voted to forego seeking new probates 
and to dissolve the Society. 

The causes for the failure of Ted 
Kremer are obviously complex. Jaimie 
Studley '72B, the outgoing vice-presi¬ 
dent of Ted Kremer, approaches an 
explanation when she says, "The prob¬ 
lem was that Ted Kremer had a lot of 
trouble defining what a service is for 
Columbia." 

The course guide, which had been 
prepared with increasing outside as¬ 
sistance in recent years, finally be¬ 
came too grandiose and independent 
to continue under the auspices of Ted 
Kremer. It severed its ties with the So¬ 
ciety during the winter, and the re¬ 
sulting vacuum was debilitating. 

For a short time, the members 
cast about for a worthy service on 
which to focus their attentions. En¬ 
tering the arena of campus politics, 
Ted Kremer agitated and organized 
i for increased coeducational activity 
i between Barnard and Columbia. Co- 


AROUND THE QUADS 


11 








education was a perfect objective— 
sufficiently non-partisan to preserve 
the ideal of universal service, yet rele¬ 
vant enough to interest members and 
prospective members. Unfortunately, 
it turned out to be too perfect, as Ted 
Kremer's early efforts developed into 
the Coeducational Alliance, an inde¬ 
pendent organization with its own 
distinct governing board. 

As a last hope, Ted Kremer con¬ 
sidered merging with Blue Key and 
Van Am. But the older societies, al¬ 
though failing, were still managing to 
struggle along on tradition, and de¬ 
clined to shed their individuality for 
a questionable common benefit. 

Finally, according to Miss Studley, 
the members of Ted Kremer, many of 
them active in several campus activi¬ 
ties, decided that they "weren't doing 
anything in Ted Kremer to justify the 
time taken from their other interests." 
The probate class, two Columbia men 
and three Barnard women, voted to 
disband. The outgoing actives con¬ 
curred. 

Campus apathy is a convenient 
scapegoat for failures at Columbia, 
but apathy played only a minor part in 
Ted Kremer's demise. In fact, an ab¬ 
sence of apathy elsewhere is partially 
responsible. Every possible function 
that Ted Kremer formerly performed 
is now being executed more effi¬ 
ciently by some other group. Dances 
and parties are presented regularly in 
Barnard's McIntosh Center and in Co¬ 
lumbia's Ferris Booth Hall. The gov¬ 
erning boards of both buildings also 
show movies, thereby obviating an¬ 
other Ted Kremer tradition, the Fes¬ 
tival of the Arts. 

Any apathy lies in the failure of 
the service societies to explore worth¬ 
while new avenues of service, and in 
the failure of the community to re¬ 
spond to whatever overtures were 
made. Miss Studley wryly commented, 
"We gave an oldies sock hop which 
was a huge success, but that was just 
because it was the 'groovy thing' of 
the moment." Service societies evi¬ 
dently cannot survive on such tran¬ 
sient achievements. 

One Ted Kremer alumnus, who 
has maintained close communication 
with College affairs, does not question 
how Ted Kremer deteriorated from a 
healthy service society to a defunct 
one. Instead, he muses, "I don't know 
if Ted Kremer was ever healthy. I don't 


know if any service society on the 
Columbia campus was ever healthy." 

The same alumnus, however, 
looks at the dissolution of Ted Kremer 
with sadness. "At a time when I didn't 
know what to do with myself, Ted 
Kremer gave me something to do." 
That, after all, is a service. 

HAPPY ENDINGS 

The sagas of Columbia's two 
troubled publications have both 
ended happily. Spectator is out from 
under in its dispute with the Internal 
Revenue Service, as the I.R.S. has 
abandoned its bid to revoke the news¬ 
paper's tax exemption. And Forum , 
whose University subsidy was termi¬ 
nated last winer, will arise, Phoenix¬ 
like, under the auspices of University 
Seminars. 

Spectator's troubles began a year 
ago, when the district director of the 
I.R.S.'s New York office concluded 
that the editors' past endorsements of 
political candidates violated the terms 
of their tax exemption. They ended ab¬ 
ruptly early in June, with the publica¬ 
tion of a memorandum from the fed¬ 
eral agency's national office, advising 
the district director that there was no 
basis for taking action against the 
daily. The memorandum, which had 
actually been issued more than a 
month earlier, cited in support of its 
findings the fact that editorial policy 
is determined by majority vote of 
the undergraduate editors, not by the 
University. The annual turnover of 
editors, it noted, approximates 80 per 
cent, and, furthermore, dissenting edi¬ 
tors frequently register their opinions 
in separate columns. The decision 
leaves Spectator free to endorse po¬ 
litical candidates and take stands on 
pending legislation in the future. 

Forum, too, is secure, at least for 
the time being. It will reappear in 
October under the editorship of Erik 
Wensberg. Wensberg, who replaces 
Lee Ambrose, edited the magazine 
from 1957, when it was founded, until 
1963. 

His first task is to redeem the 
pledges which poured in during the 
winter and spring, ever since the 
Forum took its plight to its readers and 
launched a drive for subscribers. 6,000 
readers have already promised to sup¬ 
port the venture, and Wensberg hopes 
to attract 15 to 20,000 by the end of 


the 1971-2 academic year. He will 
have to, as the magazine will receive 
no funding from any other source. The 
October issue will be sent to everyone 
on the old mailing list —that is, to all 
alumni —in a bid to sell more sub¬ 
scriptions. Subsequent mailings will 
go to subscribers only. The price per 
year, for four issues, will be $6.50. 

The new editor-in-chief empha¬ 
sizes that the magazine will continue 
to have substantially the same format 
and content as before, with one dif¬ 
ference: it will no longer be obligated 
to carry articles about Columbia. 

Wensberg describes the Seminars' 
sponsorship of Forum as "purely 
nominal." Seminars not only will sup¬ 
ply no money, but will exercise no edi¬ 
torial control. But then, Seminars' own 
institutional ties to Columbia are 
tenuous. Founded by the late Prof. 
Frank Tannenbaum, they are discus¬ 
sion groups conducted by non- 
Columbia as well as Columbia faculty 
members, with the University provid¬ 
ing nothing more than secretarial as¬ 
sistance and a place to meet. 

The association is enough, how¬ 
ever, for Forum to continue to bear 
the Columbia name on its masthead. 
As Wensberg explains it, "They (the 
Seminars) thought that if we were to 
call ourselves a Columbia publication, 
we had to have some sort of plug to 
plug into. The whole thing was their 
idea. The Seminars are conducted by 
an extraordinary group of scholars, 
representing just about all the dis¬ 
ciplines there are, and as such they 
considered themselves an appropriate 
body to do the job." 

There will be a publication board, 
chaired by University Professor 
Jacques Barzun, to assist with the ven¬ 
ture. Members of the board were 
appointed by University President 
William McGill. This does not imply, 
however, any continuing relationship 
between the administration and the 
magazine. According to Wensberg, 
McGill, as the former publisher, was 
simply turning the publication over to 
a new —and independent — group of 
directors. 

While the institutional arrange¬ 
ments are confusing, one thing is 
clear. Forum will continue to function 
as a high-quality vehicle for the dis¬ 
semination of scholarly ideas —for as 
long, that is, as enough of its readers 
want it to. 


12 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



GAY LIBERATION 

It was the best-attended social 
event of the year. Over 500 people 
joyously grooved to taped rock music 
in Columbia's Earl Hall. The dance, 
held last March, was sponsored by 
Gay People at Columbia (G.P.C.). Most 
of the dancers were homosexual and 
more than half were not affiliated with 
the University. For G.P.C. members, 
the large turnout was one more sign 
of the changing attitude at Columbia 
towards homosexuals or, as they pre¬ 
fer to call themselves, "gay people." 

Four years ago, when the Student 
Homophile League was registered as a 
campus activity, it was the first of its 
kind in the nation and "news" in The 
New York Times. The league was a 
controversial subject which seemed to 
embarrass both its student founder 
and administration officials. Using a 
pseudonym, the former explained in 
lengthy mimeographed press releases 
that the club included an equal num¬ 
ber of homosexuals and heterosexuals 
and that its purposes were civil-liber¬ 
tarian: to educate the public and fight 
for equal rights for homosexuals. In a 
letter to the Times, Wesley First, Direc¬ 
tor of University Relations at that time, 
assured the public that Columbia's 
registration of the league carried "no 
explicit approval or disapproval of the 
student organization as such." 

Today, one G.P.C. leader, Morty 


Manford '73, estimates there are more 
than 100 campus homosexual groups, 
including clubs at Yale, Cornell, M.I.T., 
and the University of Kansas. 

Gay People at Columbia formed 
itself last fall, when the Student 
Homophile League failed to survive 
the graduation of its founder. The 
principal difference between the new 
organization and the old one is ap¬ 
parent in G.P.C.'s manifesto, which 
proclaims: "G.P.C. does not concen¬ 
trate on the political goals of the 
homophile movement. It seeks, 
through informational, educational, 
and social activities, to present as 
complete a view as possible of the 
contemporary gay experience. An im¬ 
portant function of G.P.C. is its service 
as a center where members of the 
campus gay community can congre¬ 
gate—as gays and as individuals — 
with dignity and without fear." 

Most G.P.C. members stress the 
importance of sponsoring programs 
through which campus homosexuals 
can meet. A junior from Pennsylvania 
explains, "Too often there is no place 
for gays to congregate except in op¬ 
pressive gay bars. G.P.C. is trying to 
provide better activities and to make 
homosexuals feel at home on campus." 

Last April the group won a 
"home" for itself, at least for the time 
being, when the Furnald Undergrad¬ 
uate Dormitory Council granted it 
space to be used as a lounge for 
homosexuals. The room allocation 


was made in spite of reservations 
voiced by President William McGill 
and Director for Student Interests 
Philip Benson. Benson opposed the 
grant on the ground that lounges 
should only be reserved for groups 
with "the unique problems of ethnic 
minorities." Dr. McGill told Spectator 

— before the grant was made — that he 
did not feel that "the University is 
obliged to give lounge space for the 
cultural activities of gay people." 
Dean Carl Hovde has yet to give for¬ 
mal approval to the U.D.C. action. 

About 15 G.P.C. members work 
hard at planning programs. Aside from 
dances, they have sponsored a theater 
performance, a film, educational raps 
in the dorms, and semi-monthly 
lunches. A forum on "Sexual Libera¬ 
tion," co-sponsored by G.P.C. and Co¬ 
lumbia Women's Liberation, featured 
Kate Millet, author of Sexual Politics, 
and attracted an audience of nearly 
one thousand people. 

It is impossible to say positively 
how many undergraduates belong to 
G.P.C., since no membership lists are 
kept, and graduate students, faculty, 
alumni, and others in the Columbia 
community are welcome to —and do 

— attend meetings and activities. Busi¬ 
ness sessions draw anywhere from a 
dozen to fifty people, but the faces 
are not always the same. Although 
"straights" may join G.P.C., and 
heterosexuals have attended some 
social events, none has been active in 
running the society. 

While G.P.C. is certainly not 
evangelical in nature —many among 
its constituency prefer to remain 
anonymous — it naturally is supportive 
of its members' sexual preferences. 
Most members oppose a view of the 
homosexual as "sick." Morty Manford 
sums up for them when he says, 
"The person who believes he can 
change or be 'cured' is oppressed. A 
person is not facing himself if he be¬ 
lieves the problem is sexuality. The 
enemy is not his gayness but a society 
that does not allow him to express 
himself." 

Even within G.P.C., Manford's as¬ 
sertion does not go completely un¬ 
challenged. One member, a freshman 
from Westchester County, has "not 
g closed the doors on the possibility of 
£ a heterosexual life" for himself. But he 
y is also quick to affirm the G.P.C. 
& motto: "Gay is beautiful." Q 


GAY TIMES: Militant homosexuals led by Morty Manford '73 
(facing camera, left), hold protest meeting 
at Gold Rail. 



AROUND THE QUADS 






TENURE: 

FREEZE OR SQUEEZE? 


COLUMBIA IS CONTRACTING. 

FOR JUNIOR FACULTY, 

THIS MEANS FEWER PROMOTION OPPORTUNITIES, 
THOUGH NOT AS FEW AS THEY FEAR. 


BY THE EDITORS 


"If we continue the way we're going/' a young 
assistant professor warned recently, "Columbia in 20 
years will consist almost entirely of preceptors and 
professors with tenure. There'll be virtually nothing in 
between." 

Administrators and department chairmen insist 
that things aren't all that bad. And indeed they are 
not. But the speaker was expressing a fear which is 
shared by many of his colleagues. Moreover, the fear 
has just enough substance to be credible. 

For what is certainly true is that University-wide 
contraction is forcing gradual reductions, both in the 
size of the teaching staff and in the total number of 
courses. These reductions can be accomplished only 
in part through normal attrition, resulting from death, 
resignation or retirement of tenured personnel. Since 
senior men cannot be dislodged against their wishes, 
the rest will have to be brought about by trimming 
the numbers of junior faculty. 

This is not to suggest that Columbia's non- 
tenured teaching staff, consisting largely of assistant 
professors, will suffer the fate of the Assyrians at 
Sennacherib. But a greater percentage than before 
will not be promoted to tenured positions, and will 
therefore be forced, under the University's up-or-out 
rule, to look elsewhere for jobs. Since job opportu¬ 


nities at other institutions are also diminishing, it is 
small wonder that the period of the assistant profes¬ 
sorship—always an anxious one—is becoming more 
tension-ridden than ever. 

Neither is it surprising that many young teachers 
believe the promotion picture to be even grimmer 
than it is. From the standpoint of the institution, the 
belief is almost as destructive as the reality would be, 
because of the morale problem which it creates. Con¬ 
tributing to that morale problem is a widespread im¬ 
pression (which department chairmen challenge) that 
a cost-conscious central administration is insensitive 
to the liberal arts. 


The predicament of the junior faculty had its 
genesis in the major events of our times: the Vietnam 
war, the state of the national economy. But the proxi¬ 
mate cause can be found in sharply changing patterns 
of graduate school enrollments over the past two 
decades. It is, of course, the graduate schools which 
not only turn out new instructors but make the 
greatest demands upon existing faculty resources— 
especially in highly specialized graduate seminars, 
where the student-faculty ratio can be as low as one 
to one. 


14 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 








The mid-1950s through mid- 
1960s, like the period immediately fol¬ 
lowing the Second World War, were 
expansion years for American higher 
education. The products of the war 
baby boom had reached college age, 
and large faculties were needed to ac¬ 
commodate them. Fears of a tech¬ 
nology gap, generated by the launch¬ 
ing of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, 
brought an influx of federal money, 
especially in the sciences. Young men 
and women wkh newly-acquired B.A.s 
pounded on the doors of the graduate 
schools, lured by prospects of attrac¬ 
tive positions in teaching and govern¬ 
ment. The graduate schools did not 
turn them away. New ones opened, 
while older ones expanded. As the 
number of students rose, so did the 
number of teachers. 

Of the young men whom Colum¬ 
bia hired in those days as instructors 
or assistant professors, roughly one in 
three could expect to attain tenure, 
and be insulated thereafter from arbi¬ 
trary dismissal. While tenure was 
never granted indiscriminately, de¬ 
partments were willing to gamble. If 
Professor A turned out to be a disaster, 
why, it would always be possible three 
years later to elevate Professor B, who 
specialized in the same area. Besides, 
some degree of gambling was neces¬ 
sitated by two new developments. 
One was the gradual introduction of 
the up-or-out rule, imposing a seven- 
(or, in some circumstances, eight-) 
year ceiling on non-tenured appoint¬ 
ments. As a result, candidates for ten¬ 
ure were younger than in the past, and 
had accumulated a less impressive set 
of credentials. The other was that rival 
institutions were besieging youthful 
instructors with attractive offers, 


thereby forcing their departments to 
make tenure decisions on the spot. 

By the late 1960s, however, those 
World War II babies had graduate de¬ 
grees of their own. Now they too were 
looking for teaching jobs—but the 
population had not continued to ex¬ 
pand at the same rate. The flow of 
federal money, diverted by military 
commitments around the globe, had 
dwindled. The effects of recession, 
coupled with a rising backlash against 
campus disorders, had tightened 
alumni purse-strings. 

The spiral, in short, had been 
halted. But administrators, accus¬ 
tomed to thinking big, were slow to 
adjust. At Columbia, decentralization, 
accompanied at times by the empire¬ 
building of deans and chairmen, made 
it impossible to reverse the expansion¬ 
ary trend. Like so many runaway can¬ 
cer cells, the departments continued 
to grow. 

Statistics do not adequately tell 
the story of what happened during 
those years. Figures are misleading, 
because of differences in methods of 
classifying students and teachers. 
Clearly, however, the number of grad¬ 
uate students fell rapidly between 
1964 and 1969, back to the level 
which had prevailed before the boom. 
Part of the cutback was by design- 
some departments realized they had 
grown too large to be manageable— 
but the rest was due to declining de¬ 
mand. 

Meanwhile, there was no corre¬ 
sponding reduction in the size of the 
faculty. The young men who had at¬ 
tained tenure during the boom years 
were still in their thirties or early 
forties, with three decades to go be¬ 
fore retirement. Some were ensconced 


in subject areas which attained sud¬ 
den, but ephemeral, popularity dur¬ 
ing the 'fifties, and which were partic¬ 
ularly hard-hit thereafter by decreases 
in registration. More traditional fields, 
with older tenured professors, also de¬ 
clined in appeal. 

In short, Columbia—like many of 
its sister-institutions—now finds itself 
dangerously over-extended, and must 
cut back. "We've gone," summarizes 
one chairman, "from an expansionary 
period not to a static period—which 
would be bad enough—but to a defla¬ 
tionary one, involving the shrinkage of 
several departments." The precise 
consequences, in numbers of persons 
affected, are impossible to predict. 
The University has only recently 
awakened to the crisis, and corrective 
measures are too new to assess. How¬ 
ever, several developments can be 
anticipated. 

• Department chairmen have 
been alerted to expect no increases in 
allocations for at least five more years. 
"The most we can hope for," a chair¬ 
man reports, "is to stay even in real 
purchasing power—that is, to keep 
pace with the cost of living—but even 
that is optimistic." Moreover, depart¬ 
ments have been instructed to use 
whatever moneys are available to aug¬ 
ment the salaries of existing staff. "If, 
continues the chairman, "priority is to 
be given to raising the salaries of 
tenured people, some men will have 
to go." Obviously, he is not referring 
to senior men. 

• Cross-listing—the process 
whereby duplicate offerings in the 
College, the School of General Studies, 
and even the Graduate Faculties—are 
consolidated (or "rationalized," to use 
a prevalent phrase)—will continue at 


"At Columbia, decentralization, accompanied at times by the empire¬ 
building of deans and chairmen, made it impossible to reverse the expansion¬ 
ary trend. Like so many runaway cancer cells, the departments continued to 
grow." 


TENURE: FREEZE OR SQUEEZE 


15 

















an accelerated pace. Within each divi¬ 
sion, parallel sections will be merged. 
A few of the less popular or more 
esoteric courses will be eliminated al¬ 
together, or else bracketed (that is, 
given in alternate years.) There will be 
fewer courses, a somewhat higher 
student-faculty ratio, and fewer 
teachers. Department chairmen will 
no longer be able to take for granted 
that vacated tenure lines will be filled, 
especially if other men are teaching 
similar courses elsewhere in the Uni¬ 
versity, or student interest in the field 
has declined. Thus, departments ac¬ 
customed to maintaining three or 
more instructors in major areas of 
specialization—one for each liberal 
arts subdivision—may have to make do 
with just one. 


between graduate and undergraduate 
teaching will gradually be erased. 
Senior professors, formerly tucked 
away in the graduate school, will be 
forced either to teach undergraduates 
or go elsewhere. A few, asserted an 
administrator with grim satisfaction, 
"will be working for the first time in 
25 years." One consequence—a happy 
one for the College—will be to bring 
even more distinguished names into 
Hamilton Hall classrooms. Another, 
less felicitous, will be to leave fewer 
slots open for junior personnel, whom 
some regard as better teachers than 
their seniors, because of their greater 
enthusiasm and rapport with students. 
The transition could have particularly 
dire consequences for the CC pro¬ 
gram, which relies almost exclusively 


become necessary to dismiss at least 
some instructors and assistant profes¬ 
sors before they have completed their 
full terms. Until now, for instance, an 
assistant professor whose performance 
was satisfactory could normally expect 
to serve out the five years allowed him 
under the up-or-out rule. This may no 
longer be so. There are isolated in¬ 
stances in which such premature dis¬ 
missals have already occurred. How¬ 
ever, it is still too early to detect a 
trend. 

"People aren't being fired," one 
chairman insists. "The administration 
is being very humane." But the same 
chairman adds that he will make no 
predictions beyond the coming aca¬ 
demic year. 

Institutional controls on the 


"Ten years ago, tenure was granted to one candidate in three; today, ac¬ 
cording to Associate Dean of the Graduate School Robert Brookhart, the 
figure is closer to one in four. The difference does not amount to a tenure 
freeze, but certainly reflects a significant diminution in opportunities for 
young teachers." 


(Just how many tenure lines are 
being permitted to lapse is in dispute. 
According to outgoing Associate Dean 
of Faculties Ivar Berg, "a department 
can count on pretty-near automatic 
approval of a tenured appointment to 
a vacant tenured line, as long as its 
program is sufficiently meaningful and 
viable." ["A lot of departments must 
be non-viable," a chairman re¬ 
sponded.]) 

• Until now, there has been, in 
some departments, a de facto division 
of labor, whereby most senior profes¬ 
sors supervise dissertations and teach 
small graduate seminars, while non- 
tenured faculty teach larger (and—to 
many—less desirable) lecture sections 
in the undergraduate College. As the 
number of courses diminishes, the line 


on non-tenured faculty. 

Where possible, the University is 
accomplishing its purposes through 
normal attrition: that is, by allowing 
tenure lines to remain vacant after the 
departure of the incumbent, and by 
letting junior faculty members go after 
they have served out their full pro¬ 
bationary periods. This has meant 
fewer hirings and fewer promotions. 
Ten years ago, tenure was granted to 
one candidate in three; today, accord¬ 
ing to Associate Dean of the Graduate 
School Robert Brookhart, the figure 
is closer to one in four. The difference 
does not amount to a tenure freeze, 
but certainly reflects a significant 
diminution in opportunities for young 
teachers. 

In addition, it could conceivably 


granting of tenure in the liberal arts 
divisions have tightened considerably. 
A chairman who wishes to promote an 
assistant professor to an associate pro¬ 
fessorship—the lower of Columbia's 
two tenured ranks—must first seek 
budgetary approval from the budget 
subcommittee for arts and sciences, 
consisting of the Deans of the College, 
General Studies, and the Graduate 
Faculties. Although in theory such ap¬ 
proval has always been required, this 
procedure had occasionally been by¬ 
passed when the chairman was seek¬ 
ing merely to fill a vacated tenure 
line, rather than to create a new one. 
Now, it is mandatory in all cases. 

"We look," says Dean of the 
Graduate Faculties George Fraenkel, 
"to whether the department needs the 


16 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






man in the context of its overall 
plans." By "overall plans," Fraenkel 
means that he and his associates in¬ 
quire into the demand for the can¬ 
didate's specialty, and whether the de¬ 
partment has other men teaching in 
the same area. Ultimately, the deci¬ 
sion involves a judgment as to whether 
the department should expand in that 
particular field, remain at its existing 
level of strength, or cut back. "If em¬ 
balming has become obsolete because 
of new developments," explains Ivar 
Berg, "then you don't permit the re¬ 
placement of a retiring professor of 
embalming." 

Once budgetary approval is 
granted, and the tenured members of 
the department have voted on the 
nomination, an ad hoc committee, 
consisting of five tenured professors 
from other departments of the Univer¬ 
sity, is convened under the super¬ 
vision of the Vice President for Aca¬ 
demic Affairs. For the past two years, 
committeemen have been appointed, 
in practice, by a ten-man advisory 
committee. Members of the advisory 
committee, in turn, are named by the 
committees on instruction of the Col¬ 
lege, the School of General Studies, 
and the three Faculties of the graduate 
school (Philosophy, Political Science, 
and Pure Science), with each selecting 
two. One purpose of the reform was 
to avoid even the appearance of 
"command influence" on the ad hoes. 

The ad hoc committees were in¬ 
stituted in the mid-1950s, to counter¬ 
act what many regarded as inbreeding 
and slipshod promotion practices in 
several departments. Meeting in strict¬ 
est confidence—even the names of the 
members are supposed to be unknown 
to the nominee—they review his pub¬ 
lished writings, references from dis¬ 
tinguished scholars in his field, his 
qualities as a teacher, and his services 
to the University. Unlike the budget 
subcommittee, the ad hoes concern 
themselves principally with the merits 
of the individual candidate, although 
they sometimes examine the needs 
and plans of the department as well. 

About a year ago, the administra¬ 
tion drafted a new set of procedures 
for ad hoc committees. Among the 
changes, perhaps the most important 
is one which requires the members to 
function as Anglo Saxon jurors, seek¬ 
ing evidence on their own. (In the 
past, they were merely permitted to 


do so. Many committees relied almost 
entirely on materials submitted by the 
department chairman.) In addition, 
the new guidelines call for more ex¬ 
tensive documentation than was nec¬ 
essary before. 

It is widely acknowledged that 
the committees are taking their task 
more seriously than ever. "I don't 
know anyone who doesn't believe 
that they're getting tougher," an¬ 
nounces one chairman, expressing 
what seems to be a consensus among 
his colleagues. Tightened procedures 
are not reflected, however, in higher 
rates of rejection, which have re¬ 
mained fairly constant over the last 
five years. (Between 85 and 95 per 
cent of the candidates who go before 
ad hoc committees are successful.) 


Rather, they are apparent, if at all, in a 
sharply declining number of nomina¬ 
tions. In the arts and sciences alone, 
for example, the annual number of 
ad hoes between 1967-8 and 1969-70 
averaged more than 30. This past year, 
there were only 17. 

That chairmen have grown more 
cautious in recommending promo¬ 
tions, for fear that ad hoes will veto 
them, is only one possible explana¬ 
tion. The decrease could also mean 
that fewer requests are being ap¬ 
proved by the budget subcommittee. 
Some departments may be moved by 
a genuine desire to cooperate with the 
administration in its efforts to trim ex¬ 
penses. Most important of all, per¬ 
haps, they realize that they will not be 


able to correct mistakes as readily in 
the past. "You think twice," a chair¬ 
man pointed out, "when you know 
that if you promote the wrong guy, 
you won't get another chance for ten 
years." 

There is other, less ambiguous 
evidence that ad hoes are scrutinizing 
portfolios more carefully. Of the 17 
committees which convened last year 
in the arts and sciences, six insisted 
upon meeting a second time before 
passing judgment on the candidate- 
more, observes Dean Fraenkel, than in 
any previous year. 

Once the ad hoc committee has 
recommended promotion, the recom¬ 
mendation must still be approved by 
the Vice President for Academic Af¬ 
fairs and, ultimately, the Trustees. 


However, a nomination which has 
gone through the department, the 
budget subcommittee, and an ad hoc 
committee is not expected to en¬ 
counter difficulties at the higher levels. 

Although Columbia's problems 
have been rendered particularly acute 
by the decentralized administrative 
structure which prevailed throughout 
the 'fifties and 'sixties, other univer¬ 
sities are also tightening their belts. 
Dartmouth, for example, has cut back 
its faculty this year by about three per 
cent, through what a spokesman calls 
"selective non-filling of vacated ten¬ 
ure. lines." A similar reduction is an¬ 
ticipated for the coming year. In addi¬ 
tion, junior faculty must now wait a 


"It is widely acknowledged that the committees 
are taking their task more seriously than ever. 'I 
don't know anyone who doesn't believe that 
they're getting tougher/ announces one chairman." 


TENURE: FREEZE OR SQUEEZE 


17 















"Columbia will continue to promote outstanding young professors, but 
at a lower rate than in the past. Some will be forced to move on, not because 
they lack merit, but because senior men are already teaching in their fields." 


longer time before being considered 
for tenure, due to the presence of a 
large number of tenured professors, 
many of them relatively young. 

At Yale, the undergraduate news¬ 
paper has predicted "a slight rise in 
average class size and a slight reduc¬ 
tion in course offerings"—especially 
new or highly specialized ones—in 
1971-2. Lapsed tenure and non-tenure 
positions, the newspaper says, will 
remain largely unfilled. 

And at Princeton, a four per cent 
average annual increase in the size of 
the faculty, extending from 1964 until 
1969, has been halted. Promotion 
figures for the past academic year re¬ 
mained stable, and if anything rose 
slightly. But Dean of the Faculty 
Richard A. Lester concedes that "if 
you eliminate the areas in which we're 
expanding, there'd probably be a de¬ 
cline." 

At Columbia itself, the profes¬ 
sional schools as well as the arts and 
science complex have been caught up 
in the deflationary trend. "The Univer¬ 
sity hasn't denied us the right to fill 
tenure lines," reports Dean of the En¬ 
gineering School Wesley Hennessy. 
"But we have been forced to stay 
within an overall budget, and we've 
made decisions, in certain instances, 
not to fill vacated lines in order to 
conform to that budget." To date, says 
the dean, there has been no pre¬ 
mature dismissal of junior faculty 
members. But that situation could 
change, he adds, if his school takes 
another ten per cent cut in general 
income, as it did last year. 

Dean George James of the Busi¬ 
ness School maintains that promotion 
opportunities are as good as they have 
ever been. But some of his faculty 
members are skeptical. And he him¬ 


self acknowledges that "when your 
faculty is not growing, you have to 
watch a little more carefully to avoid 
an imbalance." 

Throughout the liberal arts divi¬ 
sions at Columbia University, chair¬ 
men have been reluctant to sound the 
alarm. Some acknowledge that they 
are unwilling to make public state¬ 
ments which might exacerbate the 
fears of junior faculty. Others—the 
majority—agree that there has been 
contraction, but argue that it is a good 
thing. "There used to be too much 
duplication," explains one. "It was 
simply unreasonable to offer more 
than a single survey course in the same 
area." Another was blunter. "Colum¬ 
bia was a mess," he says. "When you 
look back and see all that fat and 
empire-building, you look upon pen¬ 
ury as an opportunity to enforce 
needed reforms." 

"A lot of chairmen," retorts an as¬ 
sistant professor, "identify with the 
University as something apart from its 
students and younger teachers. They 
don't realize that the growing aliena¬ 
tion and cynicism of these younger 
teachers can damage Columbia just 
as much as the loss of vital programs." 

What does create misgivings 
among department chairmen is un¬ 
certainty over the future. "It's the 
proverbial vicious circle," explains 
one of them. "The administration 
keeps asking us to come up with a 
concrete plan, stating our needs and 
objectives. We can't plan concretely, 
because the University hasn't told us 
how much money we're going to get. 
Before it can tell us, it has to formulate 
its own academic plan, for which it 
needs input from us. But we can't 
provide the input, because we don't 


know what resources will be at our 
disposal, or what further cuts we'll 
have to make." 

In addition, there are two wild 
cards in the deck, which increase the 
complexities of charting future direc¬ 
tions. One is the matter of graduate 
school enrollments. Will they level off, 
or will they continue to decline—and, 
if so, how sharply? Another is the issue 
of course requirements in the under¬ 
graduate divisions. Columbia College 
and the School of General Studies 
each establishes its own requirements 
for graduation. While this is so, Dean 
Fraenkel points out, "a department 
can come up with a good curriculum, 
which is accepted by one undergrad¬ 
uate division and not by the other. The 
result is that it doesn't know whether 
it'll be able to consolidate its pro¬ 
grams." 

The future is indeed uncertain. 
As one administrator puts it, however, 
"the basic elements are clear." Most 
departments will no longer expand. 
Columbia will continue to promote 
outstanding young professors, but at a 
lower rate than in the past. Some will 
be forced to move on, not because 
they lack merit, but because senior 
men are already teaching in their 
fields. The departments, with essen¬ 
tially static budgets, will have to cope 
with rising operating costs—including, 
not least of all, the salary require¬ 
ments of their senior faculty. 

Even in the halcyon days of the 
early 'sixties, a chairman was heard to 
remark that administering a depart¬ 
ment was like walking an endless 
tightrope. It still is, but the rope has 
tautened, and is likely to remain that 
way for some time to come. 


18 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










Roar Lion Roar 


LATE-SEASON 

SPOILERS 

The decidedly unprepossessing 
7-11 record with which the varsity 
baseball team finished its season was 
not nearly as bad as it could have 
been. Loaded with sophomores, the 
Lions lost nine of their first ten games. 
The hitting, considered the team's 
strong suit, did not live up to expecta¬ 
tions. The pitching, considered the 
weakest part of the team, did. 

Then, as sophomores are wont to 
do, the team executed an abrupt 
about-face. Columbia won six of its 
final eight games and threw the East- 
tern League pennant race into chaos. 

The Harvard game at Cambridge 
was Columbia's high point. People in 
the Boston area were so sure Harvard 
would clinch the title against Co¬ 
lumbia that the contest was televised. 


(Who says that baseball is a dying 
game? Who says that program direc¬ 
tors are locked into mass market ap¬ 
peals? Who says that whimsy is dead 
in technotronic America?) 

Columbia won 7-6. The Lions 
bombed the Crimson's vaunted 
pitcher Bill Kelley, (who had achieved 
vauntedness by hurling 23 consecutive 
innings of shutout ball.) Columbia's 
Paul Kaliades, who plays linebacker in 
the autumn, pretended that the base¬ 
ball was a quarterback and mashed a 
430-foot home run over the center- 
field fence. Lion pitcher Ray Nawro- 
kci, with an unimpressive earned run 
average of 6.75, struck out All- 
America Pete Varney with two on and 
two out in the eighth inning to pre¬ 
serve the victory. That was impressive. 

The next day, in the throes of 
violent trauma, Harvard dropped a 
double-header to Princeton, forcing a 
playoff with Cornell. (Harvard re¬ 
covered in time to win that one). 


The pitching of Bill Downs and 
the hitting of Jesse Parks and John 
Yergan were of great importance to 
Columbia over the second half of the 
season. But the Lions' most spectacu¬ 
lar player was secdnd baseman Rick 
Blank. He dove on his belly, he leaped 
high into the air. He ranged to his left 
and he flashed to his right. Virtually 
nothing hit to the right side of the in¬ 
field got past him. And to top every¬ 
thing off, Blank executed the one play 
which separates men second-basemen 
from boy second-basemen — the dou¬ 
ble play pivot. 

At one point, Blank had handled 
43 consecutive chances without an 
error. Coach John Balquist consulted 
his personal collection of record 
books dating back to the first folio of 
the War of 1812 and announced that 
only Lou Gehrig had ever done better 
in a Columbia uniform. Tony Lupien, 
the Dartmouth coach and a former 
major-leaguer, said, "I don't think I've 


ROAR LION ROAR 


19 




















































































seen a fielder like him in college ball." 

Blank did not play freshman base¬ 
ball last year. He tried basketball in¬ 
stead and had a miserable time against 
the full court press. The layoff didn't 
help his hitting either. A hot-streak 
brought his final average up to .151. 
Look, you have to face facts. The kid 
has no offense. But how many great 
glove men swing the old bat? 

The freshmen won eight of their 
ten games, an augury of better times 
to come. In particular, watch John 
Gill, who can hit (15 runs-batted-in in 
the ten games) and pitch (four wins 
and five complete games in five starts). 
Pitcher Glenn Erickson did nearly as 
well (three wins in four decisions) and 
has more natural ability (35 strikeouts 
in 37 innings, with only 13 walks). 


LEADING HITTER: Right-fielder 
John Yergan '72 (left) paced Columbia 
batsmen in Eastern League 
competition. 

ALL-STAR: Center-fielder 
Jesse Parks '73 (right) made all-Ivy 
second team. 


LATE BLOOMERS: The 1971 Lion baseball team played 
better at the end of the season than 
at the beginning. 





20 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 











CREW CUT 

It was nearly another year of unal¬ 
loyed disaster for Columbia oarsmen. 
Between them, the freshman and var¬ 
sity heavyweight crews lost all 13 of 
their races. The freshman and junior 
varsity lightweights went 3-11. 

But there was one mitigating cir¬ 
cumstance, the performance of the 
varsity lightweight boat. After losing 
its first four races, Columbia wiped out 
Rutgers and Georgetown. Then came 
an astonishing second-place finish in 
the Eastern Sprints before 5000 slack- 
jawed onlookers at Worcester, Mass. 
The Lions beat Princeton in the final 
heats by more than two seconds. In its 
first race of the season, Columbia had 
lost to Princeton by a full 13 seconds. 
(Harvard finished first in the Easterns. 
Nobody beats Harvard ip the Easterns.) 

The reason for the abrupt reversal 
of form: midway through the season 
sophomore Al Medioli, a world youth 
sculler, came down from the heavy- 
weights and took over the stroke posi- 

STUDENTS 
STRIKE OUT 

On April 18, establishment ad¬ 
ministration played a softball game on 
South Field against undergraduate ad¬ 
ministration - the Board of Managers 
of Ferris Booth Hall. Without cheating 
or even pulling rank, the big kids won, 
11-7. 

They were led by a brawny left- 
handed slugger with a crew cut and 
grey hair who unloaded a two-run 
homer. The stands were awash with 
rumors that the man was a ringer from 
Fordham and San Diego State named 
McGill. 

When asked if this were true, a 
fellow who claimed to be his agent 
said: "The only thing you can use for 
publication is that we'll talk to anyone 
who will come up with a reasonable 
tax package and a no-cut contract. The 
attrition rate for university presidents 
is frighteningly high." 

A gnarled old man with a frayed 
suit, white socks, and a Mets hat 
squinted into the sun and growled: 
"This ain't football. We don't give no 
no-cut contracts." Then he spat tobac¬ 
co juice onto the Sundial. 



it all the way to the 
Henley Regatta. 


tion. Coach John Abele noticed a 
slight flaw in Medioli's sweep, sug¬ 
gested a correction, and suddenly the 
Lions were an eastern crew power. 

The reward: a bid to compete for 
the Thames Cup at Henley, England. 
For the first time in 42 years a Co¬ 


lumbia crew has been invited to that 
most prestigious of rowing events. The 
only other time besides 1929 that Co¬ 
lumbia rowed in England was in 1878, 
when the Lions' four-oared shell be¬ 
came the first American crew to win a 
race on the Thames. 



SWINGER: Columbia President William McGill 
hit one out of the park. 


ROAR LION ROAR 


21 












SHINING KNIGHT 

Well, at least Columbia is still 
a fencing power. The Lions went out 
to Colorado Springs and came back 
with another NCAA Championship. 
(They actually tied for first with N.Y.U., 
but around here one must take what 
one can.) And the best fencer of them 
all was juniorsabreman Bruce Soriano. 

Soriano took his second NCAA 
title in as many years of varsity com¬ 
petition. If he wins again in 1972 he 
will become the first man ever to win 
three consecutive national champion¬ 
ships. It should not be too difficult, 
because Soriano went40-C) in the East¬ 
ern and National tournaments. (That's 


no losses at all. None.) "I think he's 
the best fencer ever at Columbia," 
said coach Louis Bankuti, "an Olympic 
prospect in three or four years. 

Meanwhile, though, Soriano 
sharpens his skills against stiff com¬ 
petition. After the NCAAs, he com¬ 
peted in the Martini and Rossi Inter¬ 
national Tournament and finished 
eighth in a field of 68 of the world's 
finest amateur fencers. In March of 
1970, Soriano paid his own way to 
Minsk for the Junior World Champion¬ 
ships, where his NCAA gold medal 
meant nothing. 

"America's on the bottom of the 
fencing ladder," he said. "To the Euro¬ 
peans I was like Joe Schmoe." 


SLOWDOWN 

As the season began, track coach 
Irv Kintisch expected about 25 varsity 
competitors. As the season ended, he 
was lucky if 12 showed up for a meet. 
At practices, Kintisch was almost 
lonely. Columbia went 0-6 in varsity 
track. 

"A lot of kids have developed the 
feeling that they can't spare the time 
to come to practice," said an unhappy 
Kintisch. "Not the good kids, but the 


marginal ones, the ones who really 
need it. They have no feeling of obli¬ 
gation to the team or to Columbia." 

Kintisch, however, did have a 
couple of "good kids." Big ones. Who 
throw things. One is sophomore Jave¬ 
lin man Bill Laberis, who after only 
four weeks of work threw 188 feet. He 
had never thrown a javelin before. 
"You'll be hearing from him," prom¬ 
ised Kintisch. 

You have already heard from 220- 
pound senior Ron Furcht, Columbia's 
one-man weight throwing team. 


GOING DOWN: High jumper Jim Gorman '71 
on a return trip. 



CHAMPION: Flanked by fencing coach 
Lou Bankuti, Bruce Soriano accepts his 
award at the NCAA finals. 


Furcht holds Columbia records in the 
35-pound weight throw, the hammer 
throw and the discus. He finished 
fourth in the weight throw at the In¬ 
door NCAA Championships, the first 
points ever scored by Columbia in the 
NCAA Indoor meet. Ron's second 
place finish in the hammer throw at 
the IC4As (outdoors) got him a bid to 
the NCAA Outdoor Championships at 
Seattle. 

Furcht is a combination biology- 
economics major and plans on be¬ 
coming a doctor. If he stays in shape 
he should have little trouble collecting 
his fees. 

The freshmen did not do badly at 
all (by recent Columbia standards), 
winning three of their seven meets. 
The mile relay team took first place at 
the Penn Relays with a time of 3:20.9, 
a school record. In that race Columbia 
defeated, among others, teams from 
West Virginia, St. John's and (gasp) 
Villanova. 

The anchor man was Paul Arm¬ 
strong, the Oakland, California quar¬ 
ter mile high school champion. In col¬ 
legiate recruiting parlance, Armstrong 
is referred to as a "walk on," signifying 
that he came to Columbia with no en¬ 
couragement whatsoever from the 
athletic department. Carlton Butler, 
who ran the second leg of the relay, 
decided to leave the team after the 
record-setting performance. He said 
that there was no longer a sufficient 
challenge for him in track. This is what 
is commonly referred to as a "walk 
off." 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


MANNY WARMAN 









HELPING HANDS 

On October 31, 1970, Columbia 
lightweight football player Tom Eye- 
stone 71 galloped upheld on a kick¬ 
off return. He was intercepted by Cor¬ 
nell linebacker Ken Kunken. Eyestone 
went down. It was, he commented 
afterward, "the best tackle anybody 
ever made on me." 

It was also the last tackle Ken 
Kunken made on anyone. The 20-year- 
old junior from Oceanside, Long Is¬ 
land had broken his neck. 

Since then, Kunken has been hos¬ 
pitalized, completely paralyzed from 
the neck down. Doctors warned that 
his condition was permanent. Medical 
expenses soon drained the family's in¬ 
surance. 

Slowly, people began to help. A 
Kenny Kunken fund was established 
in his home community of Ocean- 
side. Long Island newspapers got hold 
of the story. A feature appeared in the 
New York Post. 

Michael Rubin, a Columbia fresh¬ 
man from Newton, Mass, read the 
Post article. So did his roommate, 
freshman David Ho, of Fort Lee, New 
Jersey. Neither Rubin nor Ho plays 
football. Both, however, were pro¬ 
foundly moved by Kunken's plight, 
and resolved to do what they could 
for him. 

What they have done already has 
been staggering. With the blessing and 
help of lightweight coach Harvey 
Silver, they set up a committee, con¬ 
sisting largely of Columbia lightweight 
football players. Committee members 
prevailed upon United Artists to 
donate four movies, which were 
shown, at two performances, in space 
provided free of charge by the Board 
of Managers. Tickets were sold for 
$1.50 apiece. They also organized a 
raffle, peddling chances for fifty cents. 

The response to the movies was 
disappointing—both performances to¬ 
gether netted less than $500— but the 
raffle turned a profit of nearly $4,000. 
It did so in spite of the fact that the 
value of the merchandise which was 
given away in prizes exceeded the 
proceeds from the lottery sales. The 
reason: every item of merchandise 
was donated by alumnus Thomas 
Macioce, of Allied Stores, a former 
football player himself. Even the raffle 
tickets were printed free. 



•iBiwra 


CHANCE OF A LIFE: Mike Rubin talks into megaphone 
at benefit raffle for Ken Kunken. 


Rubin and Ho are not finished. 
They plan, for the summer, a 72-hour 
softball marathon between Columbia 
students and members of the Ocean- 
side community, at which they will 
sell clothing — mostly expensive furs — 
left over from the raffle. They also ex¬ 
pect to continue their fund-raising 
activities in the fall. 

Early in their campaign, they ar¬ 
ranged with the Van Am Society to set 
up a mailing address for donations. 
Contributions can be sent to The Co¬ 
lumbia Student Fund For Kenny Kun¬ 
ken, c/o the Van Am Society, Office of 
Student Activities, Room 206 Ferris 
Booth Hall, Columbia University, New 
York, N. Y. 10027. 

Meanwhile Kunken, to everyone's 
astonishment, has shown some im¬ 
provement. He has regained partial 
use of his left arm, and is able to feed 
himself for the first time since his ac¬ 
cident. There is talk of his returning 
to school in January. Rubin hopes to 
persuade him to transfer to Columbia, 
since it would be impractical for him 
to attend Cornell. 

To date, Rubin and his associates 


have raised slightly more than $4,000. 
If the softball marathon proves suc¬ 
cessful, it should account for another 
$1,500. Rubin's goal is $100,000. Kun¬ 
ken's annual expenses are $75,000. 

GETTING 

CLUBBED 

As was the case in all the spring 
sports with the exception of light¬ 
weight crew, the performance of the 
golf team was a disappointment. The 
varsity won only four matches, lost 11 
and tied one. The freshmen were two 
and six. 

The brightest moment of the sea¬ 
son occurred when the varsity de¬ 
feated a team from Villanova, a legiti¬ 
mate golf power in the east. That 
victory should sustain coach Peter 
Salzberg until next season. Sajzberg is 
one of your typical Philadelphia sports 
chauvinists. Don't ever get him started 
on Philadelphia backcourtmen. He 
even roots for, get ready, the Eagles. 

o 


ROAR LION ROAR 


23 








THE COURT PHYSICIAN 

Psychoanalyst Herbert Hendin Has Singlehandedly Built 
A Tennis Program At Columbia. 

By Steve Singer 


Until 1967, when Dr. Herbert M. Hendin became head of the Tennis Advisory Committee of the Varsity 
'C' Club, the sport had, to put it as charitably as possible, a bad name around here. 

The site behind Baker Field on which the courts were located is difficult to describe with any degree of 
precision. Comparing it to a vacant lot comes close but does not quite do. Anyone out there remember 
Dresden? 

The courts had been constructed in such a way as to face a natural phenomenon which made it quite 
difficult for players to approach the game with the proper attitude. In tennis parlance, this phenomenon is 
commonly referred to as the sun. Members of the Columbia community did not play a great deal of tennis. 


24 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 










The situation for the varsity players was appreci¬ 
ably worse. There was, it should be noted, one less 
court than necessary to play a varsity match properly. 
Among other things, this meant that matches would 
drag on late into the afternoon. When the sun would 
finally go down the players would have to contend 
with the cold winds whipping in off the Hudson River. 
Very few good tennis players ever played for Colum¬ 
bia. Those players, of whatever calibre, who did go 
out for the team had a difficult time summoning the 
required amount of enthusiasm. Columbia played to 
sparse and desultory crowds, and won very few tennis 
matches. Anyone out there remember the St. Louis 
Browns? 

Then, in 1967, Dr. Hendin burst onto the scene. 
Dr. Hendin, class of 1945, is a psychoanalyst, a profes¬ 
sor at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Clinic, and con¬ 
sultant at the Student Health Service. He is one of a 
handful of men in his profession engaged in the ap¬ 


plication of psychoanalytic techniques to social prob¬ 
lems. He is presently involved in a project at Colum¬ 
bia for the study and treatment of students victimized 
by drug abuse. It is part of a larger project of his: the 
study of college students in all of their various aspects 
—strung out, politically violent and, let no one feel 
slighted, straight as arrows. 

Four years ago, he inadvertently wandered into 
the arcane realm of intra-University interest-group 
politics and emerged in complete control of the situa¬ 
tion. Columbia, much to its own and everyone else's 
astonishment, has emerged with one of the finest 
tennis programs in the country. 

Now this is a miracle of admittedly modest pro¬ 
portions. Building tennis programs out of thin air 
cannot in substance be fairly compared with attempts 
to improve the human condition. But it is remarkable 
nevertheless. These days one takes one's miracles 
where one finds them, and it is pointless to waste 



AND THEN THERE WAS ONE: The tennis court outside John Jay is the only one 

left on the Morningside campus. 


THE COURT PHYSICIAN 


25 










time making foolish distinctions. 

As an undergraduate at Columbia 
College, Hendin had played number 
one on a typically mediocre varsity 
team. But he maintained an interest in 
the sport. In 1964, a friend put him on 
the advisory committee, and three 
years later, simply because of a rota¬ 
tion rule, Hendin found himself at its 
head. 

He was just completing a project 
in Harlem on suicide among blacks 
and he found himself with some free 
time. 

"Living in New York is hard, and 
I knew I couldn't do anything about 
housing or education," he says. "But 1 
could do something about recreation. 
A decent place to play would bring a 
sense of community that was missing 
at Columbia, and there was an enor¬ 
mous potential for the game with the 
kids in Harlem. If I'd have known 
what I was getting into, though, I 
never would have done it." 

Hendin knew he would have to 
improve the facilities. That would take 
money, a commodity people and in¬ 
stitutions are notoriously unwilling to 
part with. It would also require a cer¬ 
tain degree of interest among those in 
the athletic office and other branches 
of the University administration. On 
both counts, Hendin was greeted by a 
great groundswell of eminently pre¬ 
dictable apathy. 

But Hendin, your quintessential 
goal-oriented personality type, went 
right to work. First he fixed his mind 
on the goal, and contemplated it ra¬ 
tionally and objectively. Then, with 
patience and fortitude, diligence and 
grace, he seized each opportunity by 
the throat, smashed it around a bit, 
and made it bend to his will. He wrote 
letters. He made telephone calls. He 
waited outside offices until people let 
him in. Once inside, he talked their 
ears off. If a University bureaucrat 
would say no, Hendin would try some¬ 
one higher up. If he had to talk to the 
President, he would talk to the Presi¬ 
dent. If the University would not give 
him needed funds, he would raise 
them from outside sources. If toes had 
to be stepped on, he would step on 
them. Gently, if possible. Not so gent¬ 
ly if necessary. Yelling sometimes 
helped. 

Obstacles would be circum¬ 
vented, ignored, or turned by Hendin 
to Hendin's advantage. Crew people 


did not like tennis people using the 
boathouse to change and shower. 
Hendin got money, first from outside 
sources and then from the University, 
and started to build his own club¬ 
house. If he couldn't get cooperation 
in landscaping or clearing court sites, 
Hendin would lug rocks himself. 

"We all thought he was nuts," 
says a former varsity player. "The Tun¬ 
ing gag used to be: 'Well, I guess 
Hendin's shrink told him to immerse 
himself in a hobby. This must be it.' 
But he sure did get the job done." 

It took two years to set up a 
tennis program for the Columbia com¬ 
munity. By getting members to pay in 
advance, Hendin obtained much of 
the money he needed to begin opera¬ 
tions. By demonstrating that he could 
raise money, he was able to bring 
in more. By taking then-President 
Cordier up to Baker Field, Hendin 
showed him what a good time the 
faculty, alumni, and students were 
'having. Cordier became interested. 
Bureaucratic underlings also became 
interested, often sheepishly. No one 
likes to admit he didn't want to back 
a Presidential idea. . Interest begat 
more money. All of it was plowed into 
the club. 

The courts were, zounds, turned 
away from the sun. New ones were 
added. A tennis bubble was put up for 
winter play. Stands with a potential 
seating capacity for 5000 spectators 
were erected. The grounds were beau¬ 
tifully terraced. The clubhouse, now 
near completion, will have a breath¬ 
taking view of the Spuyten Duyvil. 

A junior tennis program was 
started there. The Eastern Champion¬ 
ships were held there. The great and 
the near-greats of the tennis world 
came up to play—McKinley, Graebner, 
Fitzgibbon. "I've never seen anything 
like it," said Gene Scott, a veteran 
eastern near-great who writes for the 
New York Times. 

A program for Harlem youngsters 
began, with instruction given by Co¬ 
lumbia players and coaches. The kids 
needed balls and racquets. Hendin 
had a meeting in his office with some 
Eastern Lawn Tennis Association lead¬ 
ing lights. At the meeting he intro¬ 
duced them to people from the Har¬ 
lem community. "They couldn't re¬ 
fuse," says Hendin with a large grin. 
A winter program for Harlem young 
people is now being started. Arrange¬ 


ments are also being made for Barnard 
to use the facilities. No one is left out. 

Not even the varsity team. Re¬ 
member the varsity team? The coach 
is Butch Seewagen, one of the finest 
young players in the East. Seewagen is 
currently coach of the only varsity 
team at Columbia which won more 
spring games than it lost in 1971 
(12-6). Next year, when star Bobby 
Odsaz returns from a year in Spain, it 
will do a lot better. It will, in fact, be, 
ahem, an incipient Eastern power be¬ 
cause Mark Massey and Bob Binns will 
be right in there with him. 

At this very moment, the Colum¬ 
bia tennis club is operating in, are you 
ready, the black. Of the $520,000 
needed to complete construction of 
all the facilities, only $50,000 must still 
be procured. 

And where will Dr. Hendin be 
amidst all this activity? At times he will 
be merely looking on because now 
there are enough interested people to 
do by committee what he originally 
had to do virtually unaided. At times 
he will be with his wife Josephine, a 
literary critic, and their seven-month- 
old son. But primarily Dr. Hendin will 
be stirring things up in his chosen pro¬ 
fession which is, you may recall, psy¬ 
choanalytic research. 

In 1964, Dr. Hendin published a 
little book entitled, Suicide and Scan¬ 
dinavia: A Psychoanalytic Study of 
Culture and Character. Before he 
made the trip to Scandinavia, Hendin 
made it his business to learn Swedish 
and Norwegian fluently in only a 
year's time. "I would pay Scandina¬ 
vian students $1.50 an hour to come 
to my home and speak the languages 
to me," he says. "When they weren't 
around, I would hook up a short wave 
radio and listen to the news programs 
from those countries." That persist¬ 
ence paid off then, and would pay off 
later at Low Library and Baker Field. 

Said Commentary magazine about 
the book: "What is excellent about 
Dr. Hendin's study is that it is poten¬ 
tially so much more useful for living 
than dying: in quiet and intimate de¬ 
tail he reveals so many of the endless 
possibilities for stupidity in human re¬ 
lations. And in this, the would-be sui¬ 
cide is very much like the rest of us." 

Part of the book dealt with dis¬ 
posing of the myth that the abnor¬ 
mally high suicide rates which pre¬ 
vailed in those countries could be at- 


26 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







tributed to their welfare-state eco¬ 
nomic and social policies. Hendin 
pointed out that Scandinavians had 
been killing themselves with alarming 
frequency since at least the middle of 
the 19th century, when capitalism was 
the only system around. 

In 1969, Black Suicide appeared. 
It did not get as much play in the lay¬ 
man's press as its predecessor until 
John Updike revived it in the lead re¬ 
view of the February, 1971, issue of 


the Atlantic Monthly. 

Among other things, Hendin dis¬ 
pelled the widely held notion that the 
black woman was merely a secondary 
victim of white racism. He further 
took apart a popular idea put forth 
by two black psychiatrists, Cobbs and 
Grier, in Black Rage — namely that 
"black mothers reject and castrate 
their sons in order to prepare them 
better for the life they will encounter 
in the white world." 


A MAN OF PARTS: Herbert Hendin, a psychoanalyst and 
author, is also the architect of Columbia's 
rejuvenated tennis program. Hendin, the cool, 
persuasive type, found nevertheless that 
yelling sometimes helped. 


Hendin showed that black moth¬ 
ers who rear their sons badly do so 
because they were reared badly. "Like 
all other children," Hendin wrote, 
"those black children who have ex¬ 
perienced the least rejection are best 
prepared to deal with the world, black 
or white." 

Then, early in an article in the 
Sunday Times, this year, Hendin at¬ 
tacked a highly respected theory as¬ 
sociated with Yale psychologist Ken¬ 
neth Kenniston. Kenniston argues that 
politically radical and violent students 
come from homes in which parental 
acceptance and approval were the 
ru|e rather than the exception. 

In his article, arising out of his 
larger study of students generally, 
Hendin revealed that although the 
parents appeared to support their chil¬ 
dren's behavior, in reality they were 
avoiding having to deal with their 
children on a genuine emotional 
level. Hendin contended that the par¬ 
ents were subtly abandoning their 
children by merely saying they were 
on their side. The students told Hen¬ 
din that they were aware their be¬ 
havior was upsetting to their parents 
and, further, they knew that their par¬ 
ents were afraid to risk confronting 
them with their disapproval. 

Hendin, predictably, was criti¬ 
cized. He was accused of implying 
that student protests were made by a 
bunch of sick kids. The social injus¬ 
tices they were fighting were being 
ignored or dismissed. Hendin was not 
surprised. He was also not impressed. 
"What I said in the article made an 
even deeper indictment of society," 
he says. "Of course, you first need 
economic and social solutions before 
you can get to other human problems. 
But there is more to human beings 
than their politics. You can't under¬ 
stand revolutionary politics without 
first understanding revolutionary peo¬ 
ple." 

In addition to his research, Dr. 
Hendin maintains a small private prac¬ 
tice. "You get involved with people," 
he says, "and you can't just let go. 
Right now I have the best of both 
worlds." 

< He doesn't have a bad situation 
=. at Baker Field, either. He's always 
2 ready to show off his other major 
o project. "Some people have their gar- 
d dens. I have this." o 


THE COURT PHYSICIAN 


27 




Classes met on the lawn, 
the band gave its annual outdoor concert, 
students and children frolicked on the grass, 
and the Low Library bulletin board, 
which a year ago was covered with strike notices, 
sported paintings by the nursery school set. 



& 4 / 

C~ 

t > 

^ like 

fit 

n> 

- Hit 

V, 

9. 

C 

W4 R 

t tfi 



U. e. 


► 

mm ftDE. to | 

BOSTON ( 

L 


•ftT. May is* 

I 

r* 

MM* 

Ail; CJ2g. gJ75 




An Old-Fashioned Spring 


Photographed by 
Joel Mandelbaum 70C/71J 













































Architect Of 
Victory 

Architect, teacher, and crew 
coach Norman Hildes-Heim '60 seems 
to belong to an earlier era, but leads 
a busy life—in fact, leads three busy 
lives—in this one. 

Hildes-Heim's tastes are catholic. 
His blond hair is neatly trimmed. He 
wears double-breasted navy blue 
blazers to the office. He favors the 
Harvard Club for lunch. 

His activities are staggering. He 
has a full-time job designing interna¬ 
tional hotels on his drawing board in 
the New York office of The Austin 
Company. Mondays and Thursdays, he 
teaches architecture and creative 
methodology seminars at Harvard Col¬ 
lege, where he is a tenured associate 
professor. And in the late afternoon 
every weekday he can be found in a 
launch on the Hudson yelling orders 
to the freshman lightweight crew 


team, which he has coached—for the 
second time—since the fall. 

The logistics of Hildes-Heim's 
schedule, involving pre-dawn shuttles 
and precisely timed getaways, are in 
themselves astonishing. Even more 
astonishing is his usually serenely 
civilized demeanor which gives no 
hint of the race-runner personality 
beneath. 

Hildes-Heim, of course, does take 
vacations. He uses the summer 
months to jet among the various 
hotels, still under construction, which 
he has designed. Among these are the 
Sheraton Madrid, the Intercontinental 
Kinshasa, and the Intercontinental 
Prague, a Pan American Airlines proj¬ 
ect on which construction has been 
halted by the Czech government. Dur¬ 
ing his last visit, Hildes-Heim reports, 
he saw that the partially completed 
hotel had been taken over by 
squatters. Since the building still lacks 
electricity, plumbing, and glass for the 


windows, the architect found the sight 
"reminiscent of Morningside Heights." 

Hildes-Heim is a man who has 
known what he wants for a very long 
time. As a child he delighted in build¬ 
ing toy villages in the basement of his 
family's Fairfield, Connecticut home. 
The villages soon overflowed their 
alloted space. Norman's father, a 
Danish-born aviation engineer, would 
wryly remark, after tripping over his 
only child's latest achievement, that 
he expected Norman to be an archi¬ 
tect when he grew up. In this manner, 
remembers Hildes-Heim, he learned 
the name of his future calling. 

Through Andover and Columbia, 
where he majored in American his¬ 
tory ("to be well educated"), Hildes- 
Heim cherished his ambition. No one 
was surprised when he entered Har¬ 
vard's School of Architecture, and did 
well enough there to win a Kellett fel¬ 
lowship to teach design at Trinity Col¬ 
lege, Cambridge. ( continued) 


30 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






























































Hildes-Heim's addiction to crew 
began during his freshman year at the 
College. Until he discovered the rigors 
and joys of disciplined rowing, he was 
very unhappy at Columbia. "I was 
plunked/' he says, "into a bustling 
environment without cameraderie— 
where people weren't oriented to¬ 
ward the school. The academics were 
great but I was very lonely. I had put 
in several applications to transfer. 
Then one day a friend persuaded me 
to go out for crew. Everyone on the 
river was so committed, and the Hud¬ 
son in spring seemed to be the most 
lovely place in the world." 

After graduation, Hildes-Heim 
was parted from spring on the Hudson 
for eight years, as he passed through 
Harvard, Cambridge, and a first job 
with the Chicago office of his present 
firm. The school year 1967-68 found 
him back in New York and back on the 
river, this time as a volunteer fresh¬ 
man coach. 

The Spring '68 disturbances had a 
profound effect on Hildes-Heim. 
"Three of my kids with bleeding heads 
came to my apartment after the bust 
.. . and I felt complete horror at how 
catastrophically things had slid here." 

Hildes-Heim did not volunteer to 
coach again until last fall. In February 
he found himself with too few rowers 
to fill an eight-man boat. He scav¬ 
enged through the dorms for willing 
freshman prospects until his team 
grew to twelve. "They were a motley 
lot," he confesses. "Some were too 
weak when I found them to do a 
single push-up. But that scraggly 
bunch turned out to be a winning 
team. We were on the river every day, 
in the winter during freezing sleet and 
in the spring for hours and hours. 
There's no recognition for crew, the 
only reason to do it is you love it." 

Hildes-Heim, indeed, seems to 
love crew more than anything else in 
the world. He speaks of his architec¬ 
ture with obvious enjoyment, but 
without the passion and near-lyricism 
of his conversation about crew. One 
must pry to elicit the details of his pro¬ 
fessional pursuits, or to learn that 
when President Mobutu of the Demo¬ 
cratic Republic of the Congo, Kin¬ 
shasa, visited Washington, D.C., Presi¬ 
dent Nixon invited Hildes-Heim to 
dine at the White House. The architect 
was one of the Americans Mobutu 
knew best as a result of their meetings 


to plan Kinshasa's new hotel. 

And when Hildes-Heim speaks of 
Columbia it is in the affectionate yet 
uncomfortable tone one might use to 
describe a seriously ailing friend. With 
perceptible anguish he compares Co¬ 
lumbia to the university at which he 
teaches: "Harvard is committed to 
being the best and Columbia is not. 
Columbia just wants to be among the 
top, and it's a crime. All the great 
teachers I've ever known have been at 
Columbia." 


His eyes flash with real anger, 
however, when he discusses Colum¬ 
bia's attitude toward crew. "Crew," 
Hildes-Heim declares, "is the most 
aesthetic sport. It's rhythm, precision, 
balance. The most perfect crew is one 
that rows as one. It may seem like a 
silly thing in an age where everyone 
does his own thing. But it's not silly to 
me. Crew teaches dedication and dis¬ 
cipline. Nobody can pull a fast one. 
But most people at Columbia don't 
value this at all." 



MASTER BUILDER: Norman Hildes-Heim fashions winning 
crew teams when he isn't designing hotels. 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


31 


TRINA UPTON 




Architect Of 
Philanthropy 

Like Norman Hildes-Heim, Julian 
Clarence Levi is both an architect and 
a man of refined and catholic tastes, a 
man of the Renaissance cast incon¬ 
gruously into an age of narrow spe¬ 
cialization. Again like Hildes-Heim, he 
has adapted by pursuing, with vigor, 
several careers simultaneously. Hildes- 
Heim, however, is still a young man, 
barely into his thirties. Julius Clarence 
Levi, Class of 1896, has recently cele¬ 
brated his 96th birthday. 

Actually, Mr. Levi—who studied 
both at Columbia and at the Ecole des 
Beaux Arts in Paris—retired from 
architecture 20 years ago, when he 
was 76. Since that "retirement," 
though, he has been leading three or 
four active lives, any one of which 
would exhaust a teenager. 

It is not strictly correct to say that 
Mr. Levi has adapted to his era. In¬ 
stead, like Shaw's unreasonable man, 
he has striven with remarkable success 
to adapt the era to himself. Foremost 
among his efforts to bring a cultural 
renaissance to New York City has been 


THEN: Julian Clarence Levi, Class of 1896, 
in 1896. 





his endowment of the Laura Boulton 
Collection of Traditional and Liturgi¬ 
cal Music. The Collection, purchased 
in 1966, is housed in Columbia's 
Dodge Hall. In addition to containing 
remarkable exhibits of tape recordings 
and musical instruments, the Collec¬ 
tion also sponsors a lecture series in 
ethnomusicology, which Mr. Levi at¬ 
tends regularly. He continues, also, to 
patronize the Research Project on 
World Music in the School of Inter¬ 
national Affairs. 

Julian Clarence Levi is quite a col¬ 
lector himself. The Metropolitan Mu¬ 
seum is currently anxious to obtain his 
collection of renaissance art, the 
Smithsonian has displayed more than 
a casual interest in his household 
effects, and representatives from the 
Museum of the City of New York are 
scrutinizing his silver. 

In addition to being an art collec¬ 
tor and a patron of the arts, Mr. Levi is 
an accomplished artist. A painter since 
his early teens, his watercolors have 
been exhibited in Paris, Boston, and 
Chicago, and were most recently on 
display in Avery Hall. Most of his 
works on exhibition there were 
autumn landscapes, executed in 
bright, gay colors, and set either in 


Scarsdale or in the Adirondack Moun¬ 
tains of New York State. 

His true measure, however, shows 
itself neither in his personal achieve¬ 
ments nor in the number of interna¬ 
tional groups he has chaired and 
directed, but rather in the number and 
devotion of his friends. 

Dr. Laura Boulton, the musicolo¬ 
gist and longtime friend of Mr. Levi, 
recalls the deluge of telegrams, letters 
and messages which descended from 
the most distant corners of the world 
when Mr. Levi suffered a mild stroke 
in December. The reason why Dr. 
Boulton considers Mr. Levi the "kind 
of man who always makes new friends 
and never loses old friends" may be 
glimpsed in the fact that immediately 
upon his recovery, he answered by 
hand each of the letters which had 
poured in during his illness. 

Since recovering from his stroke, 
Mr. Levi has been spending his morn¬ 
ings and afternoons in long walks, and 
reading voraciously such diverse mag¬ 
azines as Wildlife, National Geo¬ 
graphic, and various architectural re¬ 
views. What else could be expected 
from a renaissance personified, who, 
according to Dr. Boulton, "may out¬ 
live us all"? 



NOW: Julian Clarence Levi; Class of 1896, 
in 1971. 


The Final Word 

The most volatile political issue 
on campus a year ago was the forth¬ 
coming trial of 13 Black Panthers, on 
charges ranging from conspiracy to 
attempted murder. Radical students 
challenged the University to help 
raise bail for the incarcerated defend¬ 
ants, as proof of its sincerity in seeking 
to build better relations with the black 
community. 

The trial, heralded throughout the 
country, did touch Columbia with par¬ 
ticular intimacy. The District Attor¬ 
ney's office which prosecuted the case 
was headed by University trustee 
Frank Hogan '24. A Columbia eco¬ 
nomics professor, Harold Barger, sat 
on the grand jury which handed down 
the indictments. 

But the final word belonged to 
another Columbia man, Frederic Hills 
'56, and his 11 associates. They con¬ 
stituted the jury which acquitted the 
Panthers on all charges in May. 

As startling, to many, as the ver¬ 
dict was the rapidity with which the 
jurors'agreed. Not the least astonished 
were the jurors themselves. "It was a 
shock," comments Hills, "to go into 
the jury room after the longest trial in 
New York State history, and find that 
there was no one to argue with. That 
12 people from completely different 
backgrounds could reach the same 
conclusion so quickly is itself a damn¬ 
ing indictment of the prosecution's 
case." The 12 were out for just 90 
minutes. 

Although the proceedings con¬ 
sumed two years from the time the 
defendants were arrested, the jury was 
empaneled only last September. For 
Hills, editor-in-chief of McGraw-Hill's 
college text division, it was the third 
summons to jury duty. He had ob¬ 
tained two previous postponements 
because of his job, and was refused 
a third. Still, he didn't think he would 
have to serve. 

"I figured," he said, "that the 
prosecution would have me disquali¬ 
fied, if for no other reason than 
McGraw-Hill's role as publisher of 
Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice. (It also 
published judge John Murtagh's Cast 
The First Stone, and Abortion Rap, by 
defense attorney Carole Lefcourt.) 
What assistant district attorney Joseph 
Phillips failed to elicit was that Hills 


admired Cleaver as a writer —"a very 
sensitive man" — and had once signed 
a petition, circulated among McGraw- 
Hill employees, calling upon the com¬ 
pany to raise bail for the Panther 
leader. 

"Phillips limited himself to a 
small number of conventional ques¬ 
tions," says Hills of the voir-dire. "I 
have the impression that it was be¬ 
cause he thought he had such a strong 
case that he couldn't lose." 

This is not to suggest that Hills 
harbored political opinions which 
would have precluded him from 
bringing in a guilty verdict if the 
charges had been proved to his satis¬ 
faction. "I certainly had an open 
mind," he declares. "I was capable of 
convicting right up to the end of the 
prosecution's case. There was talk of 
evidence admitted subject to connec¬ 
tion. I kept waiting for the connec¬ 
tions, but they never came." 

Indeed, until recently Frederic 
Hills had not considered himself po¬ 
litical at all. ("Look: I went through 
Columbia in the 1950s as an English lit 
major.") Vietnam, he says, "made me 
political to a degree" — to the extent, 
that is, of taking part in a few demon¬ 
strations and concluding, by 1966 or 
1967, that "it was no longer possible 
simply to be intellectual." 

Hills believes, moreover, that he 
and his associates left their politics 
outside the jury room. Those who 
analyze the findings in terms of the 
political preferences of individual 
jurors, he maintains, ignore what he 
calls "the impact of the institution of 
the jury. 

"Regardless of whether you were 
left or right, it moves you toward the 
center, and invests you with a certain 
solemnity, because of the enormous 
power and authority being bestowed 
upon you, which are simply not avail¬ 
able in ordinary life. It's you as a juror, 
not Fred Hills, who's being assigned 
the authority, and you react accord¬ 
ingly." 

Besides, Hills never considered 
the Panther trial to be explicity po¬ 
litical, in the sense of the Spock or 
Chicago Conspiracy cases. "Rather," 
he says, "it was a criminal trial in a 
political context. A lot of difficulty 
arose because the defendants were 
aggressively urging the political con¬ 
text on us, while the prosecutor and 
judge not only disputed its relevance 


but denied its existence." 

It was, in fact, the refusal of Mur- 
tagh and Phillips to acknowledge any 
political implications whatsoever 
which first sowed doubts in the minds 
of some of the jurors. According to 
Hills, "Murtagh kept telling us that the 
Black Panthers were not on trial, when 
the very first page of the indictment 
inextricably identifies the alleged 
criminals in their role as Black 
Panthers, giving their rank in the Party, 
and describing the Party itself as a 
paramilitary organization." This was, 
says Hills, "the first in a series of inci¬ 
dents which tended to alienate the 
jury and make it skeptical of the way 
the judge conducted the trial." Other 
such incidents involved heated ex¬ 
changes between Murtagh and lawyers 
for the defense, which Hills labeled 
"clear abuses of judicial authority." 

The jurors also were struck by 
Murtagh's handling of the flight, mid¬ 
way through the trial, of two of the 
defendants. "He told us," reports 
Hills, "that we could consider this as 
evidence of guilt, without offering us 
any other options, when there were 
many. The atmosphere in that court¬ 
room had become so charged, so sur¬ 
realistic — stemming largely from 
battles between the judge and defense 
counsel—that I feared long before it 
happened that someone would split 
in the belief that he couldn't get jus¬ 
tice. I even wrote it down in my 
notes." 

At the same time, Hills exoner¬ 
ates the court from charges of racial 
prejudice. "If there was any bias on 
Murtagh's part," he concludes, "it was 
his apparent belief that the defendants 
were guilty, and this colored his reac¬ 
tion to the aggressive strategy of de¬ 
fense counsel." 

In the end, however, it was not 
the attitude of the judge which 
weighed most heavily with the jury. 
It was what the jurors considered a 
dearth of hard facts to back up the 
prosecution's claims. 

As to the substantive acts of 
which the Panthers were accused, 
Hills found the evidence insufficient 
to sustain a conviction even if the tes¬ 
timony of three police undercover 
agents—the star witnesses for the state 
—were true. The conspiracy charges 
posed a trickier problem. 

"If you believed the cops, it might 
have been possible to make out a con- 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


33 



spiracy," Hills pointed out. "But the 
credibility of the police was always in 
question." He was particularly uncom¬ 
fortable with the statements of under¬ 
cover agent Ralph White, "easily the 
most complex, central, significant 
character in the whole drama. 

"I still haven't got the measure of 
this man, who at some point was no 
longer a police agent masquerading as 
a Black Panther, but became, I sus¬ 
pect, two people—one of whom was 
involved with the Panthers, liked 
them, exchanged love letters with 
them—and was capable of anything in 
either role. One speculates about 
those deep involvements—the friend¬ 
ships, the love affairs—and wonders 
what kind of betrayal of fundamental 
human trust exists within Ralph 
White." 

At least equally disturbing, to 
many of the jurors, was the open- 
endedness of the conspiracy laws 
themselves. "Through two-and-a-half 
days of instructions," says Hills, "I sat 
there and listened hard and concen¬ 
trated when Murtagh defined con¬ 
spiracy. But then, as he went on and 
proceeded to explain how one applies 
conspiracy law to these charges, and 
said one needn't know one's co-con- 
spirators or have made any oral agree¬ 
ments, that all that was needed was a 
tacit, unexpressed meeting of the 
minds, I began to get queasy. It sud¬ 
denly struck me how malleable con¬ 
spiracy law is—how easily it lends itself 
to distortion and abuse. 

"I never quite said, 'I will not con¬ 
vict under this law.' We didn't have to 
challenge the law in order to find the 
evidence insufficient. But, as a corol¬ 
lary, we did come close to challenging 
it and rejecting it." 

On the other hand, Hills does not 
view the acquittal as a clear-cut af¬ 
firmation of the defendants' inno¬ 
cence. Accordingly, he refuses to in¬ 
terpret the outcome as either a vindi¬ 
cation of the system or a triumph of 
justice in spite of the system. "I'd feel 
differently," he remarks, "if I were 
completely certain they were inno¬ 
cent in every regard. But one of the 
great ironies is that they could very 
well have done some of the things 
they were charged with. We just don't 
know. There simply wasn't enough 
evidence to support the charges." 

These reservations didn't prevent 
Hills and most of his fellow-jurors 


from joining the defendants, defense 
lawyers, and friends in a jubilant vic¬ 
tory party immediately after the trial. 
"I just responded to them as human 
beings," he explained. "They'd been 
in jail for two years, and now they 
were free." 

Did the trial have any impact on 
Hills' political thinking? "Not," he re¬ 
plies, "in any substantial way. 

"I was alarmed, though, by the 
newspaper coverage. My wife saved 
all the clippings for me, and I read 
them when it was all over. The Pan¬ 
thers were almost prosecuted in the 
New York Times. The case that was 
reported there was certainly different 
from the one I heard. I don't say the 
reporter was malicious—she did the 
best she could, according to her lights 
—but there was a definite prosecu¬ 
torial bias. 

"I'm also troubled by the whole 
matter of police surveillance. Again, 



GENTLEMAN OF THE JURY: 
Fred Hills was one of the 
jurors at New York's historic 
Black Panther trial. 


I'm not suggesting that the police are 
evil, or that there was some sort of 
police conspiracy. But the mandate 
given them is anticipatory surveil¬ 
lance. A bureaucracy is set up to do 
this, and the structure of that bureauc¬ 
racy pushes these people into surveil¬ 
lance of every dissident group they 
find. All of the pressures on the agents 
are to obtain evidence. The result is 
that the infiltrator mind tends to see 
crime where only the potential for 
crime may exist. 

"Occasionally after the day's ses¬ 
sion was over I wandered down to the 
second floor, where pleas are taken. I 
saw a sea of black faces. That struck 
me as significant: that by and large it 
is the ghetto which is maneuvered in 
there. Maybe we do, in our white 
middle class situation, see the cop dif¬ 
ferently from the way the ghetto does. 

"I did gain insight into something 
else I wouldn't have been cognizant 
of otherwise: how few cases actually 
go to trial. Most are settled through 
some sort of plea-copping. This two 
million dollar Panther trial was a mas¬ 
sive indulgence. If all cases went to 
trial, the system could never func¬ 
tion." 

Hills is now unwinding after the 
long ordeal, which was more grueling 
for him than for most. Alone of the 
jurors, he remained at his job through¬ 
out the trial, reporting at his firm for 
about an hour each morning, then re¬ 
turning in the evening until about 
nine. Often he took work home with 
him. "For the first three months," he 
recalls, "it was a great ego-trip, prov¬ 
ing to myself how well-organized I 
was. Then it began to wear." His wife 
Patricia, an art historian, notes that the 
experience imposed a strain on the 
entire family. They have two children. 

For the present, editor Hills has 
no plans to write about the trial him¬ 
self. "I might have done so," he says, 
"if there had been extended delibera¬ 
tions, the kind that would have pro¬ 
vided a unique insight into the revela¬ 
tion of character under stress. But it 
didn't happen. As of now, I've talked 
myself out of writing. I'm just tired of 
the whole thing." Hills could, if so 
moved, make an interesting contribu¬ 
tion to any second edition of his 
brother Stuart's recent book. Its title 
is Crime , Power and Morality: The 
Criminal Law Process in the United 
States. 


34 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 







LYRICAL ACTIVIST: Albert Epstein voices 
his political opinions in his poetry. 


Pentamenter 

Pen-Pal 

Some citizens write letters to 
their Congressmen, others write let¬ 
ters to their newspapers. Albert Ep¬ 
stein '10 writes poetry. The poems, 
which cover a wide range of political 
and social topics, are frequently 
mailed by their author to statesmen 
and other public figures all over the 
world. In this manner, the 82-year- 
old Mr. Epstein has accumulated a 
formidable array of correspondents, 
including the late French President 
Charles de Gaulle, the late Richard 
Cardinal Cushing of Boston, and sev¬ 
eral United States Senators and Repre¬ 
sentatives. 

Mr. Epstein's background is an 
unlikely one for a poet. It includes 
nearly half a century in the practice 
of law, particularly insurance law, in 
which he specialized until his re¬ 
tirement in 1959. After graduating 
from Columbia College, where' he 
frequently cut his zoology classes in 
order to attend the opera ("I always 
waited until after the roll was taken," 
he recalls, "and then I snuck out the 
window"), he went on to Columbia 
Law School, receiving his LL.B. in 
1912. While at the College, Mr. Ep¬ 
stein, who spent the first year of his 
life on New York's Lower East Side 
before his family moved upstate, 
worked at the Henry Street Settlement 
House. From his experiences there 
with Jewish immigrant families, and 
his own boyhood in the Catskills, 
where his parents owned "the first 
Jewish hotel" in the area, he acquired 
a lifelong interest in Palestine which 
is visible in his poetry. 

From Columbia Law School, Mr. 
Epstein entered practice, at a salary 
of seven dollars a week, with the law 
firm of Fleishman and Fox. Shortly 
afterward, he opened his own office, 
in partnership with his brother. When 
World War I came, he enlisted in the 
Army as a private, emerging as a sec¬ 
ond lieutenant. 

A series of business ventures fol¬ 
lowed. From one of them, the manu¬ 
facture of women's lingerie, Albert 
Epstein acquired not only prosperity 
but a wife, Ethel, who worked for 
him as a designer before the two were 
married. Finding that he was not 


happy in business, he went back into 
law, first as an attorney with the New 
York Life Insurance Company, and 
then on his own. 

Between 1937 and 1939, he au¬ 
thored a series of articles, published in 
the United States Law Review, attack¬ 
ing the practices of insurance com¬ 
panies. The companies, he charged, 
represented themselves as fiduciar¬ 
ies, while really treating their clients 
at arm's length, as in ordinary business 
transactions. He called for greater 
vigilance on the part of clients' law¬ 
yers, who, he complained, often failed 
to scrutinize insurance contracts with 
sufficient care. 

He was taken aback by the vitu¬ 
perativeness of the response. Letters 
poured in on him, many of them 
anonymous, but presumably from at¬ 
torneys and insurance men. "My 
faith," he says grimly, "was not for¬ 
gotten." One such letter, for example, 
demanded: "Don't you Jews get 
enough out of this country?" 

Mr. Epstein began writing poetry 
in 1949, when he was hospitalized. A 
collection of his poems, entitled "The 
Father Of Our Country Speaks," was 
published by Exposition Press in 1952. 
The themes—racism, poverty, foreign 
policy—are the same ones reflected in 
his more recent works. In 1962, while 
vacationing in Hyannis, Mass., he sub¬ 
mitted a poem to the Barnstable Pa¬ 


triot, a local monthly newspaper. His 
contributions have appeared in its 
columns regularly ever since. 

In addition, Mr. Epstein sends his 
poems to any public figure with a spe¬ 
cial interest in the subject-matter. 
Most respond. Mr. Epstein and the late 
Cardinal Cushing, for example, kept 
up a warm exchange of letters until 
the latter's death. Before long, the 
Cardinal was addressing his corres¬ 
pondent as "Dear Albert" and inquir¬ 
ing affectionately after "Ethel." 

Those qualities of Mr. Epstein's 
which endeared him to Cardinal 
Cushing—gentleness and a profound 
love of humanity—permeate his po¬ 
etry, as in one of his earlier works, 
when he wrote: 

Does the color of a child of God 

Bedevil and debase heart and 
soul 

And create a child inferior to all 
other children? 

More recently, he has bemoaned 
the fate of servicemen killed in Viet¬ 
nam, and one of his poems, Does 
Folly Lead A Nation To The freights 
Of Glory?, was read aloud to the 
House of Representatives by New 
Jersey Congressman Henry Helstoski. 

Mr. Epstein and his wife live to¬ 
day in Maywood, N. J. They have no 
children. 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


35 






PRISONER: 
David Malament wouldn't fight. 


Portrait 
Of A Felon 

"You would really describe him 
in the maximal moral vocabularly: in¬ 
tegrity, decency, goodness," said Co¬ 
lumbia philosophy professor Arthur 
Danto. "He's an unusual, remarkable 
person." The "unusual, remarkable 
person," David Malament '68, is also 
a convicted felon who is serving a six- 
month prison sentence for refusing 
induction. 

There was little in Malament's 
college career to suggest the draft re¬ 
sister. Raised in New York City, by a 
family which he describes as "old 
left," he shied away from political 
activism at Columbia. "He was close 
to a lot of people in S.D.S.," reports 
Danto, "and they respected him, but 
he was never able to tolerate their 
moral arrogance." Malament did help 
to organize a draft moratorium, at 
which speakers discussed alternatives 
to military service. He also served on 
the disciplinary committee created in 
the wake of the spring uprising during 
his senior year. 

Malament never received the 
headlines accorded to his more poli¬ 
tical classmates—among them the late 
Ted Gold, whom he'd known since 
they attended Stuyvesant High School 
together—but he attained consider¬ 
able distinction as a scholar. A math¬ 
ematics major, he graduated with 


honors and won a Fulbright grant to 
study in Germany. He would never 
have reached Germany if he hadn't 
persuaded his draft board, through an 
ingenious argument, to give him an 
occupational deferment. 

It was in Germany, Malament 
says, that his present views began to 
take shape. "I was confronted there," 
he recalls, "with many individuals 
who had to explain to their children 
what they were doing in the war. 
They hadn't been SS members or 
even in the army, but still they felt 
the need to disclaim responsibility, 
jjf 20 years hence, didn't want to be 
placed in that position." 

"Somewhere during the year," 
Malament decided to let his defer¬ 
ment lapse. The following September, 
while a doctoral candidate in philos¬ 
ophy at Stanford (he has since trans¬ 
ferred back east to Rockefeller Uni¬ 
versity), he mailed his draft card back 
to his board. In an accompanying let¬ 
ter, he explained: 

I do not consider leaving the 
country to avoid a confrpnta- 
tion, nor do I consider ex¬ 
ploiting the -internal weak¬ 
ness of the Selective Service 
System in order to delay that 
event indefinitely. I do not 
because I feel committed to 
the ideals of this country . . . 
and do not think that these 
ideals are best served by pri¬ 
vately and quietly 'beating 
the system.' My actions must 
be public if I am to con¬ 
tribute through support and 
example to a movement 
which resists an attempt at 
moral suicide. 

Elsewhere in the same letter, he 
had written: "The realization that one 
is an American, that one cannot live 
abroad without a certain sense of loss, 
is connected with an increased sense 
of outrage and frustration with the 
policies which one, as an American, 
must accept responsibility for." 

It was, says Danto, typical of 
Malament that he should assert his 
Americanism while in the very act of 
defying a statute. "He could easily 
have gone to Canada," Danto de¬ 
clares. "He could have gotten into an 
excellent school there. But he felt 
that he's an American, and his place 


is here. He's very patriotic." 

More complex was his decision 
not to seek conscientious objector 
status. Danto and others sought to 
persuade him to apply. "I argued," 
says Danto, "that no-one has an obli¬ 
gation to be a martyr, that no justifi¬ 
cation could [ae given unless he could 
accomplish something truly signifi¬ 
cant, that it was wrong to suffer in 
silence to make an irrelevant case." 
But his former student, he discovered, 
was not easily swayed. "He's not stub¬ 
born," Danto concluded. "He just has 
great individuality. He sought criti¬ 
cism on every point. Insofar as a de¬ 
cision could be well thought out, this 
one was." 

Malament describes his reason¬ 
ing as follows. In the first place, he 
considered it wrong to accept a de¬ 
ferment, because, by recognizing Se¬ 
lective Service's right to bestow 
deferments, one impliedly concedes 
its authority to withhold them. Such 
authority is lacking, he believes, be¬ 
cause both conscription and the Viet¬ 
nam War are illegal. And in the sec¬ 
ond place, he did not clearly qualify 
for a deferment, because he would 
defend the United States "in a hypo¬ 
thetically clear case of aggression." 

"I was forced," he explains, "to 
draw a delicate balance between the 
significance of the symbolic act—both 
in terms of my own moral dignity and 
the political consequences which I 
could achieve—against the personal 
consequences to myself. There's no 
calculus for resolving that balance. 
It's not clear that the significance of 
the symbol would outweigh the con¬ 
sequences to myself if I were a paci¬ 
fist. Since I'm not, the scale is bal¬ 
anced differently, and the decision be¬ 
came easier to make." 

Whether he was in fact eligible or 
not is a close question — the Supreme 
Court has recently confirmed that pos¬ 
sible willingness to fight in a hypo¬ 
thetical future war is not necessarily 
disqualifying — but Malament main¬ 
tains that to seek a deferment in any¬ 
thing but a clear-cut case would be 
"to take advantage of my articulate¬ 
ness, or my access to an attorney." 

His induction notice did not 
come until the following year. After 
that, events followed one another in 
remarkably short order. He refused in¬ 
duction in November, 1970, was ar¬ 
raigned in January, and was brought 


36 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



to trial just five weeks afterwards. 

In court, Malament's attorneys 
sought to demonstrate the reason- 
ability of his belief that the war is 
illegal, in order to negate the criminal 
intent which the law requires. Evi¬ 
dence on this point was excluded, and 
instead, Malament reports, "the pros¬ 
ecution conclusively proved what we 
never denied—that I refused induc¬ 
tion." Hovyever, Federal judge Irving 
Ben Cooper did allow Malament to 
explain his views. Then the jury re¬ 
tired, to consider the sole issue of 
whether the defendant had refused 
to step forward—and one juror held 
Out for acquittal. 

The re-trial came in only two 
weeks. This time, there was no mir¬ 
acle. The jury brought in a guilty 
verdict after deliberating for an hour. 

"The remarkable thing," says 
Malament, "is that there were scores 
of jurors—both times—who were dis¬ 
qualified because of the strength of 
their beliefs." Most of these, he ob¬ 
serves, were sympathetic to him. 

On May 20, Malament was sen¬ 
tenced by Judge Cooper to six months 
in prison, to be followed by an 18- 
month period of supervised civilian 
employment in the natioriai interest. 
No appeal was taken. 

"It's ironic," muses a former fel¬ 
low-student. "Of all people at Co¬ 
lumbia, David was the least rhetorical. 
Yet the others have all found their 
ways out." 

For those who have "found their 
ways out"—and they surely include a 
sizable majority of College graduates 
since the mid-1960s — Malament 
evinces no ill-feeling. "I'm wary," he 
explains, "of judging people without 
knowing their reasons. I think every 
person should confront the issue of 
complicity. But if he confronts it and 
comes to a different Conclusion, that's 
fine with me." 

Of prison, he says: "Two or three 
years in jail would be difficult for 
someone who doesn't know why he's 
there. If a person doesn't have reason¬ 
able confidence in the rightness of 
his decision, the consequences would 
be intolerable. 

"Of course, there are always 
doubts—not just for yourself, but for 
the consequences to family and 
friends. But I've thought of these, and 
because of a personal self-sufficiency, 

I feel able to face it." 


Legal Notes 

Music-haters and music-lovers 
alike will agree that many unusual 
sounds emanate from Los Angeles. 
Now, thanks to the efforts of Jerome 
Kessler '63, the mellow tones of a 
cello octet are also wafting high above 
the smog. 

The octet, / CeUisti, actually origi¬ 
nated to fill a vacuum in the busy 
California music scene. When Kessler 
graduated from the Columbia music 
department to attend law school at 
U.C.L.A., he found a distressing ab¬ 
sence of classical music.. Although 
Kessler, while at Columbia, had both 
performed and produced many con¬ 
certs, he discovered few musical out¬ 
lets at U.C.L.A., a university which he 
estimates has "done more to retard 
art than any other campus." In fact, 
Kessler was disappointed with the 
musical atmosphere of Los Angeles. 
The city, he maintains, is "still a small 
town culturally." 

The result was an almost defen¬ 
sive grouping of classical musicians, a 
growing network of chamber music 
ensembles and performances, and 
finally, the / CeUisti, with Kessler as 
conductor. 

Of course, Kessier was still busy 
obtaining his law degree, and laying 
the foundation for what is ndw a "full¬ 
time" job as a studio musician. This 
means that conducting cello octets 
and producing records is only a part- 
time hobby for Kessler. His livelihood 
comes from his law practice (he deals 
mainly with musicians and their spe¬ 
cial legal problems) or backing up the 
latest rock group on its new record¬ 
ings. 

Although at one time Kessler may 
have agonized over choosing between 
law and music—"My music teacher ad¬ 
vised me to go into law and my law 
teacher recommended music," he re¬ 
calls—he now finds that his two 
careers complement instead of com¬ 
peting with one another. "In law," he 
asserts, "a client has a problem and 
the goal is to solve it as quickly as 
possible. The difference from abstract 
musical thinking provides intellectual 
balance." 

As more artistic souls flee the in¬ 
creasing confinement of New York 
City, more cellists and composers 
materialize in Los Angeles. "We have 


a few good organizations, and things 
are happening," declares Kessler, who 
has recently been reinforced by the 
arrival of Joel Kresmick '63, now 
teaching at the California Institute of 
the Arts, and Tom Ziegler, who sold 
his "Cafe Figaro" in New York and to¬ 
day is also active in supporting cham¬ 
ber music in Los Angeles. 

If, as Kessler glowingly reports, 
two cellos can play Vivaldi with the 
richness of an entire orchestra, then 
the influx of cellists to the coast 
should produce near-heavenly tones. 
At the very least, eight cellists should 
certainly be able to do justice to the 
work of Casals and Vivaldi, as well as 
to the compositions of more contem¬ 
porary artists such as Robert Linn and 
Jesse Ehrlich (who also plays first cello 
in the group.) 

I CeUisti's first record was re¬ 
leased last January on the Orion label, 
and is doing moderately well in the 
small volume market of classical re¬ 
cordings. However, Kessler and his 
fellow musicians are not seeking fi¬ 
nancial rewards from their cello ad¬ 
ventures. According to the conductor, 
the / CeUisti is "something we're do¬ 
ing essentially for us. We're saying 
something we want to say." 

Kessler feels that phonograph rec¬ 
ords are catching up to concerts in 
audience appeal, due largely to tech¬ 
nological improvements and greater 
accessibility. "With the new electronic 
equipment, a listener can have all the 
effects of a concert right in his house 
without having to drive into town, pay 
for a parking space, and then sit next 
to a pole behind someone who's snor¬ 
ing," Kessler explains. "By recording, 
we give a little bit of what we have to 
people." 

this concept of service and giving 
reaches back to Kessler's Columbia 
days, when, as he puts it, "Somebody 
was casting bread upon the waters. 
Whatever we got back there is paying 
off—we can give back to our future 
world something that we got out of 
it." Columbia has been blamed and 
credited for diverse contributions, so 
perhaps it's not all that unthinkable 
to credit beleaguered Alma Mater 
with Los Angeles' first cello octet. 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


37 





Medical 

Globetrotter 



If Navy ships carried cargoes of 
medicine instead of 70 millimeter 
shells, and American doctors worked 
for free, you'd have a reasonable ap¬ 
proximation of the world in which 
physician David Miller '53 already 
lives. 

That world, utopian as it seems, 
also contains elements from the work¬ 
aday present and the forgotten past. 
It includes, for example, a comfort¬ 
able suburban home and weekend 
tennis. And Dr. Miller himself is an 
opthalmologist who writes mysteries 
on the side. 

Most of the time, David Miller is 
a solid citizen of Winchester, Mass., 
and a hard-working clinical instructor 
of opthalmology at Harvard Medical 
College and Massachusetts Eye and 
Ear Infirmary. But every few years, 
while his colleagues are taking vaca¬ 
tions, Dr. Miller donates ten weeks of 
his time to the hospital ship S.S. 
Hope, formerly the U.S.S. Consola¬ 
tion. Since 1960, the vessel has been 
on loan from the U.S. Navy to Project 
Hope, a privately funded foundation. 
In 1967, Miller worked on board the 
Hope while it was docked in Carta¬ 
gena, Colombia. In 1970 he joined the 
ship in La Goulette, Tunisia. 

When Miller returned from that 
second trip, he decided to write a 
murder mystery, set—where else?— on 
a hospital ship, Mercy , docked in 
North Africa. The mystery novel, en¬ 
titled Victims of Mercy , is now in its 
second draft and "all true," accord¬ 
ing to its author, "except for the 
murders . . . and oh, yes, the drug 
smuggling." Most of it, appropriately 
enough for the genre, was written in 
the middle of the night. "I found I 
could work best if I got up at 3 a.m. 
and wrote for an hour," explains 
Miller. 

David Miller is the sort of guy 
who always takes the next step, often 
because the last one seemed too con¬ 
fining. After his junior year at the Col¬ 
lege, he entered Columbia's graduate 
optometry program on the profes¬ 
sional option plan. His interest in eye 
diseases, however, soon outstripped 
the bounds of optometry, so he took 
extra organic chemistry courses and 


sucessfully applied to transfer to New 
York Medical College. In his last year 
at medical school he was faced with 
the imminent possibility that his girl¬ 
friend, Rene, would desert him to 
travel with her water ballet troupe, 
which had been invited to perform at 
the Brussels World Fair. The resource¬ 
ful Miller proposed, and won both the 
hand and continued presence of his 
lady. Their honeymoon was spent 
above water driving from New York 
to Denver, where the army had pro¬ 
vided an internship for the young doc¬ 
tor. Next stop for the Millers, cour¬ 
tesy of Uncle Sam, was Alaska, and 
then David was free at last to pursue 
his studies at Massachusetts Eye and 
Ear Infirmary. 

Miller remained contentedly af¬ 
filiated with this noted hospital, first 
as a resident and then as a teacher, un¬ 
til one day in early 1967 when he spot¬ 
ted an ad in a professional journal ask¬ 
ing opthalmologists to do volunteer 
work on the S.S. Hope. Massachusetts 
Eye and Ear is still central to Miller's 
career, but now he has the Hope bug 


VISIONARY: Opthalmologist David Miller 
treats a Tunisian woman. 

as well. 

The Hope bug is partly a travel 
bug, partly a philanthropic impulse, 
and partly a professional interest in 
treating medical conditions rarely 
seen in the United States and sharing 
information with foreign colleagues. 

The S.S. Hope provides 130 hos¬ 
pital beds, sophisticated equipment, 
operating theaters, and medical and 
dental personnel in most areas of 
specialization. The ship had spent a 
year each in the ports of several de¬ 
veloping nations of Asia and South 
America before Miller joined its staff 
in Cartagena. Project Hope pays for 
the transportation of participating 
physicians and provides them with 
on-board dormitory space, but the 
volunteer doctors receive no salary or 
fees for their ten week tours of duty. 

Each doctor works with a counter¬ 
part specialist in his field from the host 
nation. In Cartagena, Miller reports, he 
established a firm personal friendship 
as well as a smooth working relation¬ 
ship with his Colombian colleague. To¬ 
gether they treated over 800 clinic pa- 


38 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



tients in the city, and visited back- 
woods towns on "off-duty" weekends 
to treat and operate on the most seri¬ 
ous eye diseases found among the vil¬ 
lagers. Miller estimates that he was in¬ 
volved in almost 90 operations during 
his Colombian stay. In both Colombia 
and Tunisia, he found many of his pa¬ 
tients suffering from congenital eye 
defects, due to inbreeding. Such con¬ 
genital diseases are relatively rare in 
this country. 

Miller admits that he and his col¬ 
leagues encountered some hostility 
from local medical establishments of 
both nations. The hostility, he be¬ 
lieves, reflected fears that the visiting 
Americans would woo away the 
wealthier patients. Suspicions van¬ 
ished when it became apparent that 
the Hope doctors attended few pri¬ 
vate patients, and then only upon re¬ 
ferral from their own physicians. One 
such private patient of Dr. Miller's 
turned out to be Madame Bourguiba, 
wife of the Tunisian Prime Minister. 
All fees collected from paying patients 
were donated by the Hope to a local 
medical college. 

Dr. Miller has nothing but praise 
for the information-sharing opportu¬ 
nities of his two Hope tours. "In a 
sense," he says, "the most immediate 
beneficiary of Hope is the medical 
community. I taught and learned from 
both my American and foreign col¬ 
leagues." Wryly Miller adds, "When 
you've been at one place for most of 
your professional life like I have, you 
tend to think there is only one proper 
way to do things. I learned a lot pro¬ 
fessionally from local doctors. Things 
I had been taught ought not to be 
done because they don't work did 
work." 

Now that Miller is stateside again, 
he is busy teaching medical students, 
treating patients, publishing reports 
on his current research, lecturing to 
community groups about his travels, 
staying in shape on the tennis court, 
and keeping his wee-hour rendezvous 
with invented murderers and victims. 
When he finds time to make plans for 
the future, those plans invariably in¬ 
clude the good ship Hope. "I think it 
would be interesting to join it in 
Brazil next year, or in Venezuela the 
year after that," muses Miller. "And 
next time I'd like the family (he and 
Rene have four children) to come 
along, too." 


Spring Wedding 

When the Columbia College 
Alumni Association was founded in 
1852, it was among the first of its kind 
in the nation. In 1874, when it was in¬ 
corporated, it was still considered an 
innovative, streamlined instrument for 
the mobilization of alumni support. 

Of late, however, defects in its 
structure have become increasingly 
apparent, especially as other colleges 
and universities have developed more 
effective ways of communicating with 
their graduates. Principal among these 
shortcomings is that the Association 
functions as a separate, dues-collect- 
ing entity, independent of the College 
which it serves. The result, despite the 
best efforts of all concerned, has been 
competition for the alumni dollar, and 
an overall lack of coordination, be¬ 
tween the Association and the school. 

The Columbia College Fund, 
established as the Association entered 
its second century, has faced a dif¬ 
ferent set of problems. Although it is 
a division of the Dean's Office, its 
headquarters are far from the campus, 
and the distance has complicated the 
task of recordkeeping. In recent years, 
when it has been hard hit by recession 
and the backlash against campus dis¬ 
orders, it has been keenly aware that 
the Association's dues —which yield 
roughly $70,000 a year —add up to 
nearly ten per cent of its own annual 
revenues. 

Consolidation, moreover, has be¬ 
come the order of the day. All over the 
University, administrators are probing 
ruthlessly for unnecessary duplication, 
wjth a view toward trimming costs 
and promoting greater efficiency. 
Among the Association and the Fund, 
such duplication is abundant. Each 
maintains its own mailing lists, each 
puts out a publication. These projects 
require separate, and expensive, staffs. 
In addition, alumni are frequently 
harassed — as well as confused — by 
overlapping mailings. For example, 
both the Association and the College 
send out announcements for Home¬ 
coming. 

But the 1950s and early 1960s 
were boom years, for the College and 
the nation. Until 1968 there was 
money enough for everyone, and, as 
long as this was so, pleas for merger 
generated little support. 1968, in the 


words of a Fund official, "pulled the 
wool from our eyes." With contribu¬ 
tions flagging ever since, administra¬ 
tors and alumni alike have realized 
that Columbia can no longer afford 
two distinct alumni structures. 

Alumni who hold high positions 
in both organizations — notably Victor 
Futter, Henry L. King, and John Mathis 
— worked actively to promote consoli¬ 
dation. Once the necessary decisions 
were made, all parties moved with 
commendable swiftness. On May 10, 
1971, the Board of Directors of the 
Columbia College Fund resolved that 
the Fund and the Alumni Association 
should be consolidated "under an of¬ 
fice which shall report directly to the 
Dean of Columbia College." The fol¬ 
lowing evening, May 11, the Board of 
Directors of the Alumni Association 
enacted an almost identical resolu¬ 
tion, which also provided that Asso¬ 
ciation dues be eliminated by 1975. 
This resolution was adopted, in sub¬ 
stance, at a meeting of the Association 
membership nine days later. All three 
votes were unanimous. As Max J. 
Lovell, Executive Director of the 
Alumni Association, observed: "Final¬ 
ly, after decades of foot-dragging, 
everything was consummated in prac¬ 
tically one night." 

Specific details have yet to be 
agreed upon. These include such 
issues as where the offices of the new 
organization will be located, and 
whether the Association will be for¬ 
mally dissolved. An alternative to dis¬ 
solution would be for the 97-year-old 
corporation to continue to function, 
with its Executive Director (and per¬ 
haps a majority of its Board of Direc¬ 
tors) appointed by the Dean of the 
College. Even if this were done, how¬ 
ever, its employees would necessarily 
be carried on the Columbia College 
payroll, since after 1975 the Associa¬ 
tion will have no independent income 
of its own. As such, they will be re¬ 
sponsible to the Dean. 

What seems certain is that an as¬ 
sociate dean will soon be appointed, 
with responsibility for alumni affairs. 
His first assignment will be to imple¬ 
ment the reorganization. Once that is 
done, concerned alumni can get on 
with what ought to be the principal 
task of any alumni structure: to sustain 
and enrich Alma Mater. o 


TALK OF THE ALUMNI 


39 














Peace Protests A nd Pickets 

Were As Much A Part Of The Campus Scene 

In Thel930sAs They Are Today. 


By Lawrence S. Wittner 
and Juliette P. Thayer 


'They talk about social and political change, they are critical of anything that has been, whether reli¬ 
gious, ethical, social, or political, they are serious in feeling that the intense nationalism of the past has 
gotten us nowhere," wrote the Dean of Columbia College about the alarming new generation of students. 
Dean Herbert E. Hawkes, that is: 1934. 

The reports of the Dean and of the University President during the 1930s were filled with bitter 
discourses on student protest. And, if Columbia's harried administrators frequently misjudged the state of 
campus unrest, their mistake lay in underestimating its depth and popularity. "For some of us in the class of 
'35 the true high points are the mass meetings, the pitched battles, the organized discord," wrote James 
Wechsler in 1953. The ablest and most active spokesman for a decade of student radicalism at Columbia, 
the liberal editor of the New York Post recalled, not without a touch of ambivalence, that "the spring¬ 
times of our college careers were symbolized by picket signs." 

The rise of a radical student movement at Columbia in the 1930s was in marked contrast to the campus 
escapism and conservatism of the preceding decade. Throughout the 1920s, Spectator studiously avoided 
off-campus political issues. In 1928, the journal declined to endorse a candidate for President, and only 
527 students bothered to vote in the daily's preference poll, won by Herbert Hoover. Even after the stock 
market crash of 1929, the campus remained relatively unmoved. "A great number of students have been 
gambling on the market," Spectator sniffed unsympathetically, and "several students have been completely 
wiped out." So much for the social crisis. The major editorial campaign of the 1929-30 school year re¬ 
volved around a successful attempt to secure a special cheering section for the student body at football 
games. Nor did the entering class in 1930 seem preoccupied with issues of greater substance. "For 45 min¬ 
utes the two forces rolled and tumbled," stated one account of the Soph-Frosh Rush, "covering the turf 
with shirts shredded to bits, trousers ripped in half, and gentlemen's unmentionables torn wide open." 


40 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 



During the following three years, however, the 
Depression era's atmosphere of social crisis gradu¬ 
ally permeated campus life. In the winter of 1930, 
Columbia's admissions office advised applicants not 
to plan to work their way through college. As the 
economic situation deteriorated, Student Board be¬ 
gan a relief fund, dispensing money and clothing to 
hard-pressed students, and Spectator printed stories 
describing the neediest cases. Across Broadway, 
three times as many Barnard women were applying 
for scholarships as in the past, and six times as many 
for loans. Nor could the social turbulence of the out¬ 
side world be ignored. Bus-loads of Columbia stu¬ 
dents headed south to study the conditions of miners 
in strike-torn Harlan County, Kentucky; the treat¬ 
ment they received there from coal operators, sher¬ 
iffs' deputies, and mobs presaged that endured by 
Freedom Riders thirty years later. "There was a new 
note of seriousness among undergraduates," re¬ 
called a former college instructor. "The rah-rah boy, 
the coonskin coat, and the gin bottle were suddenly 
quaint and old fashioned." 

The air of crisis which hung broodingly over 
those first years of the new decade stimulated a re¬ 
birth of interest in electoral politics, especially on the 
Left. With two-thirds of the college voting in Specta¬ 
tor's 1932 Presidential poll, Norman Thomas, the 
Socialist candidate, won a striking victory—one which 
he repeated in the all-University balloting. The 
Democratic nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ran a 
poor third on the campus, and students found little 
to cheer in his upcoming inauguration. Columbia's 
mood was radical, and therefore pessimistic. After 
two homeless men died in New York City on a frosty 
November night—one of starvation and the other of 
exposure— Spectator wrote despairingly: 

The official season of suffering and want 
opened Sunday night. . . . What can we ex¬ 
pect of President Hoover during this inter¬ 
regnum, while he waits for the Smiling Lieu¬ 
tenant to assume the official power of dodg¬ 
ing important issues? Can we expect both 
the Republican and Democratic Parties, with 
their reactionary elements, to meet this crisis? 

The new mood of social responsibility on the 
campus owed much to the crusading journalism of 
Reed Harris, the editor of Spectator in 1931-2. A tall, 
soft-spoken fraternity man, educated at Staunton 
Military Academy, Harris startled Columbia by his 
bold journalistic forays into world affairs and social 
problems. Under the new editor's guidance, Specta¬ 
tor "preached no doctrinnaire radicalism," Wechsler 
recalled. It "merely questioned everything that was 
sacred." 

At a time when alumni and fraternities were be¬ 


coming increasingly elated by Columbia's rising foot¬ 
ball fortunes, Harris irreverently suggested swapping 
the team for a farm and termed college football "a 
professional racket." Powerful figures grew incensed. 
"The editor of the Spectator is too serious minded," 
complained the alumni secretary. "He should be 
more collegiate." In late March, 1932, Spectator ran 
a series of articles critical of that old perennial of 
campus editors, the management of the University 
dining halls. On April 1, Dean Hawkes announced 
that "material published in the Spectator during the 
last few days is a climax to a long series of dis¬ 
courteous innendoes and misrepresentations which 
have appeared in this paper." Reed Harris was of¬ 
ficially expelled from Columbia. 

The Harris expulsion served as a catalyst for Co¬ 
lumbia's student movement of the 1930s, providing 
it with its first major cause for confrontation. For the 
next few weeks, the campus was in an uproar. On the 
Monday after the administrative decree, the Social 
Problems Club—the haven for Communists and un¬ 
affiliated radicals at Columbia—organized a protest 
rally of 1,500 students on the steps of Low Library. 
Despite a disappointing response from the faculty, 
two days later an estimated 2,000 students took part 
in a campus "strike," replete with picketing, a mass 
rally, and long speeches denouncing the school ad¬ 
ministration. "To many of us," recalled Wechsler, 
then a freshman reporter for Spectator , the strike 
"was a stirring demonstration of love for liberty, and 
a mark of our own maturity that we were at last en¬ 
gaged in the resolution of crucial issues." 

Other students, less pleased by the turn of events, 
sought to disrupt the pro-Harris rallies. Dubbing 
themselves "The Spartans," a small group of Co¬ 
lumbia athletes distinguished themselves by physi¬ 
cally attacking leafleters and speakers. When one 
student, pale and angry, returned to the steps of Low 
to speak after having been dragged across the harsh 
pavement of 116th Street by the brawny defenders of 
the higher learning, the youthful Wechsler thought 
that "This had to be one of the great turning points 
in the affairs of men, even if the undiscerning press 
aloofly dismissed it as 'Students Riot at Columbia.' " 

From the standpoint of the Administration, the 
Reed Harris affair was a disaster. Dean Hawkes was a 
friendly gentleman of the old academic school, with 
a sincere concern for students and their problems, 
but he had, unfortunately, only a dim comprehen¬ 
sion of the explosive forces of social unrest unleashed 
by the Depression. Easily stung by criticism, he 
ironically compounded his own difficulties many 
times over by expelling Harris on the day before the 
student crusader's one-year term as editor expired. 
President Nicholas Murray Butler, whose imperious 
figure would loom far larger than that of the em¬ 
barrassed Dean in future confrontations, irritably in- 


ANOTHER ANGRY DECADE 


41 






formed the Herald-Tribune three days after the story 
broke in the news media that he knew nothing about 
the case. 

On the campus, the issue refused to die, while 
elsewhere the newspapers and the American Civil 
Liberties Union pressed for clarification of the Uni¬ 
versity's anti-libertarian stance. Two harrowing 
weeks after the strike, the University agreed to re¬ 
instate Harris, who then withdrew from the College, 
as arranged in advance. But while this compromise 
finally satisfied the major parties to the dispute, the 
genie had already escaped from the bottle. The Co¬ 
lumbia student movement had been launched, and 
the University was never without an April strike ac¬ 
tion for the rest of the decade. 



HE STARTED IT ALL: Reed Harris was 
the first in a long line of 
student activists. 


In the spring of 1933, Columbia's failure to renew 
the contract of Donald Henderson, an instructor in 
economics, once again plunged the campus into 
turmoil. An avowed Communist and a staunch ally 
of student radicals, Henderson had been the one 
faculty member to speak at the Reed Harris strike 
rally the preceding year. Now, the student Left de¬ 
clared that Henderson had been fired "because of his 
political activities and his leadership in the student 
movement." President Butler replied that "anybody's 
views on any subject have nothing to do with his ap¬ 
pointment," and that Henderson had been dismissed 
for failure to achieve academic distinction. 


Throughout April and May, student picket lines 
and protest rallies succeeded on another with regu¬ 
larity. At one gathering, the colorful journalist, Hey- 
wood Broun, swallowing a huge slug of gin, stepped 
up on the sundial to denounce the Administration. 
"It is a strange thing," he observed, "that an instructor 
is incompetent as soon as he becomes interested in 
radical activities." Broun contended that a student 
strike would prove that "this University is ours and 
belongs to nobody else." In the following weeks, 
Henderson's indefatiguable supporters, again under 
assault from campus athletes and fraternity members, 
organized a torchlight parade and a moderate-sized 
strike. And yet, unlike the Harris case, this one 
evoked a weak mass response, perhaps because the 
causes of Henderson's dismissal were more obscure. 
This time, moreover, the dismissal stuck. 

Overshadowed by the more spectacular aspects 
of the Harris and Henderson cases, leftist sentiment 
at Columbia continued to grow. When Rexford Tug- 
well re-visited the Columbia campus in 1933 to laud 
the N.R.A. and President Franklin Roosevelt, Specta¬ 
tor replied scathingly that "the Administration has 
not dared to go to the bottom and find out what is 
wrong basically." Columbia's Blue Book of 1933 
quickly attained such a radical reputation that the 
University denied it the usual freshman mailing lists, 
and jester felt called upon to lampoon it. "Columbia 
is a bourgeois, reactionary handerout of what is 
laughingly called learning," stated jester's "Blooey 
Book." "It doesn't hold a candle to the University of 
Moscow." Dean Hawkes wrote regretfully in his 
Annual Report in 1933: "The year under review has 
been a very difficult one. It is perhaps inevitable that 
the turmoil in the economic and social affairs of the 
world should find an echo in the shades of academic 
life." 

For many students, the breakdown of the inter¬ 
national order rivalled that of the domestic economy. 
"Civilization once more stalks blindly toward chaos," 
cried Spectator in March, 1933. "The upheavals pre¬ 
cipitated by the last war have made no lasting im¬ 
pression on statesmen." Disillusioned by the failure 
of the "war to end wars," and sickened by the rise of 
fascist militarism, Columbia students, like so many in 
the population, turned resoundingly against war. A 
Spectator poll in April found 293 students unwilling 
to go to war in any circumstances, 484 willing to 
fight only if the United States were invaded by for¬ 
eign troops, and only 81 willing to fight in any war 
declared by Congress. By late October, Student Board 
had seized the radical initiative from the volatile So¬ 
cial Problems Club and organized the first Columbia 
University Anti-War Conference. Although the con¬ 
ference provided a rhetorical battlefield for Com¬ 
munists, Socialists, liberals and pacifists, unity was 
preserved and a permanent campus peace organiza- 


42 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






ADMINISTRATOR: Dean of the College Herbert Hawkes "was a friendly gentleman of 
the old school'' who had ''only a dim comprehension of 
the explosive forces ... released by the Depression." 


ANOTHER ANGRY DECADE 


43 




tion established. 

Columbia students held their first anti-fascist 
demonstration when Hans Luther, the ambassador of 
the new Nazi government of Germany, spoke at 
Horace Mann auditorium in December, 1933 under 
the auspices of Columbia's Institute of Arts and Sci¬ 
ences. The Social Problems Club denounced Colum¬ 
bia for giving its blessing to fascism, and announced 
plans to picket the talk, but other students contended 
that a demonstration would interfere with the Ger¬ 
man official's freedom of speech. President Nicholas 
Murray Butler entered the fray on Luther's behalf, 
proclaiming that Columbia did "not ask what a man's 
opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, 
honest and well-mannered in their presentation." 
With the Harris and Henderson cases still rankling, 
Butler's sudden concern for academic freedom ir¬ 
ritated many students, as did his assumption that an 
apologist for Nazism could be "honest" or "well- 
mannered." Nevertheless, the Jewish Students So¬ 
ciety refused to join the protest, while the issue 
divided the Socialists and the Columbia Conference 
Against War. 

On December 12, the night of the speech, the 

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE: 1935 
Jester portrayed woman scavenging 
in garbage. 



Sports of Leisure Classes — 
No. 1 —Hunting 


German official told his audience of the glories of 
Nazism, while 1000 students—drawn largely from the 
Social Problems Club and other New York colleges— 
demonstrated outside in the bitter cold. Despite the 
dismal ending to the incident, it was not without its 
rewards for campus radicals. Seventeen-year-old 
Nancy Fraenkel, prevented by police from distribut¬ 
ing anti-fascist leaflets outside the hall, drew the at¬ 
tention of the youthful Wechsler; within a year they 
were married. 

The issue of fascism on campus cropped up again 
the following fall, when a well-documented article in 
the Nation charged that Columbia's Casa Italiana 
served as a disseminator of Italian fascist propaganda 
in the United States. The article asserted, among 
other things, that in 1933 the Italian Consul-General 
in New York had contributed $3000 to the Casa, that 
the Casa's educational bureau sent out speakers to 
spread fascist doctrine, that no anti-fascist had ever 
spoken at the Casa, and that students meeting at the 
Casa were forbidden to engage in open discussions 
of fascism. Although President Butler replied that the 
Casa Italiana was "wholly without political purpose 
or significance," subsequent articles and letters in 
this and other magazines supported journalist Max 
Ascoli's contention that the Casa was, indeed, "a 
center of fascist propaganda." 

As a consequence of these revelations, the Grad¬ 
uate Club of Italian Studies split into two warring 
factions, students threw up picket lines and organ¬ 
ized protest rallies outside the Italian center, and 
Spectator called for an investigation of the Casa 
Italiana—all with little effect. Nevertheless, the issue 
of the University's complicity with fascism remained 
a sore one, and would reappear in more dramatic 
form in 1936. 

With pacifism and anti-fascism in harness to¬ 
gether on the campuses, massive anti-war strikes be¬ 
gan to shake American colleges in 1934. In February, 
1933, the Oxford Union had passed a resolution vow¬ 
ing that under no circumstances would it "fight for 
King and country." The Oxford Oath had swept 
through English universities and jumped the Atlantic 
to America, where it re-emerged as a refusal "to sup¬ 
port the United States government in any war it may 
conduct." 

Taking the Oxford Oath as their rallying cry, 
America's two major radical student organizations, 
the Communist-led National Student League (which 
absorbed Columbia's Social Problems Club) and the 
Socialist-oriented Student League for Industrial De¬ 
mocracy, called for a "Student Strike Against War" on 
April 13, 1934—the anniversary of America's entry 
into the Great War. About 25,000 students responded 
to the call, most of them in New York City. At Co¬ 
lumbia, where the strike was endorsed by every group 
from the radical Spectator to the more conservative 


44 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 











CRUSADER: Roger Baldwin points to peace pledge during campus rally in 1938. 


Student Board, the one-hour demonstration drew 
2,000 participants. The New York World-Telegram 
commented unexpectedly favorably on the day's 
events, noting that in the struggle against war, "it is 
the opposition of the cannon fodder that counts 
most." 

By 1935, the campus strikes against war had as¬ 
sumed nationwide proportions. Student organiza¬ 
tions estimated 150,000 participants, while the New 
York Times reported 60,000. At Columbia, spurred on 
by Spectator's call for "a strike which will far tran¬ 
scend any similar demonstrations on this campus," 
26 student organizations endorsed the action over 
the objections of President Butler. Critical of what he 
termed "emotional outbursts," Columbia's President 
derided the strike as "itself a form of war" and 
banned the use of the Low Library steps for the dem¬ 
onstration. In the face of this administrative dis¬ 
pleasure, 3,500 Columbia students turned out for the 
April 12 peace rally, which featured an all-star cast of 
speakers. Roger Baldwin of the ACLU chided Presi¬ 
dent Butler, while Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theo¬ 
logical Seminary called upon students to "build a 
civilization in which war is impossible." Columbia's 
Professor John Herman Randall jr. warned that "the 
immediate cause of war is that people like yourselves 
can be fooled into thinking that war is worthwhile." 
And, as if to indicate that it would never again be 
hoodwinked into supporting the warmakers, the 
audience solemnly joined James Wechsler in reciting 
the Oxford Oath. 

The 1936 strike surpassed that of the preceding 
year in numbers and irreverence. On April 22, an esti¬ 
mated 4000 students attended the annual peace rally 


on South Field. While 400 Veterans of Future Wars 
paraded among the delighted undergraduates, Barn¬ 
ard students, proclaiming themselves the Mothers of 
Veterans of Future Wars, bore placards declaring: 
"Bonus While We Can Still Dance" and "Orchids for 
the Graves of Our Sons." A "future war profiteer," 
wearing a silk hat and carrying prominent money¬ 
bags, and a Barnard girl, portraying a "future gold- 
digger," rounded out the day's lively anti-war cele¬ 
bration. 

As the editor of Spectator in 1934-35, James 
Wechsler helped ensure the success of such demon¬ 
strations by keeping radical consciousness on the 
campus at a white heat. Like Reed Harris, whom he 
had idolized as a freshman, Wechsler steered Specta¬ 
tor onto the path of radical social criticism. Unlike 
Harris, however, Wechsler was a Communist, having 
joined the Party shortly before April, 1934, when he 
became editor. 

Although Wechsler and the newspaper staff nar¬ 
rowly staved off serious curbs on Spectator's edi¬ 
torial freedom, initiated when the beleaguered Ad¬ 
ministration discovered to its horror that a bona fide 
Red had somehow become editor, Wechsler never 
moved far enough beyond student opinion to be¬ 
come intolerable. The Communist Party was shifting 
to the Right, campus opinion had veered Left, and 
Wechsler himself was too unpredictable to make a 
proper party-liner. That year, recalled Wechsler, 
Spectator criticized Columbia's Rose Bowl appear¬ 
ance, but "some of us sat in the lobby of Hartley Hall 
on the day of the game, listening to the radio broad¬ 
cast and enjoying every minute." On the other hand, 
Spectator's Marxist tone reflected how far the campus 


ANOTHER ANGRY DECADE 


45 






had come since the carefree days of the 192Qs. 
"Capitalism was a phase of history/' Wechsler wrote 
in his farewell editorial of April 13, 1935. "It lived a 
full life and it will die hard. But surveying its ... pro¬ 
longed illness which has brought such suffering and 
misery for the world, we can only bid it Godspeed." 

Wechsler could hardly have found a much better 
capitalist ogre against whom to tilt his editorial lance 
than Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia's powerful 
President, who in 1932 held $500,000 worth of secu¬ 
rities in one bank alone, was a stalwart of the Repub¬ 
lican Party; had denounced the Adamson Act, which 
established collective bargaining on the nation's rail¬ 
roads, as "a menace to our political institutions;" had 
questioned the income tax, which "interpreted 
literally . . . levels to the ground all the immunities 
that hitherto existed to surround private property;" 
had inveighed against the excess profits tax of 1920; 
had assailed legislation permitting publication of in- 



EDITOR: James Wechsler '35 was 
leading radical spokesman. 


come tax returns as "an outrageous violation of the 
rights of privacy;" and had defended "property" as 
"an attribute of personality." He opposed high in¬ 
heritance taxes, the Child Labor Amendment ("child 
labor does not exist in the United States"), socialism 
("a sort of glorified lynching"), the class struggle ("a 
revolt of the unfit, due to an inferiority complex") 
and radicals ("guilty of selfishness to the nth power"). 
On September 3,1934, in the depths of the Depres¬ 
sion, the New York Times carried the front-page 
headline: "Dr. Butler Scores Radicals on Wide Po¬ 
verty-Charge of Non-Distribution of Wealth Held 
Sheer Invention." Contending that the level of un¬ 
employment was exaggerated, President Butler added 
that the idea of "maldistribution of wealth" had been 
"mischievously devised by radicals." It was not James 
Wechsler, but Wisconsin's famed Republican Senator 
Robert M. LaFollette who once referred to Butler as a 


"handyman of privilege"—"a bootlicker of men of 
fortune." 

Nor were Butler's views on foreign affairs likely to 
encourage student plaudits. Despite his long concern 
with international arbitration, his receipt of the Nobel 
Peace Prize for his part in the drafting of the Kellogg- 
Briand Pact, and his close association with the Car¬ 
negie Endowment for International Peace, Colum¬ 
bia's President emerged in times of war as a bellicose 
nationalist. In 1898, he had told the nation's teachers 
that the United States had entered the Spanish- 
American War "in the most unselfish spirit and from 
the loftiest motives." In 1917, he became a super¬ 
patriot, firing pacifist professors from their posts at 
Columbia and turning the University into an armed 
camp. In 1918, he advocated universal military train¬ 
ing, predicting "a quick demand for national training 
of young women as well." Whenever he was in Rome, 
Butler found time to visit Benito Mussolini, the Italian 
fascist dictator. In his speeches before American 
audiences, Columbia's President deplored the ele¬ 
ment of compulsion in fascism, but also noted its 
"long series of genuine improvements in the public 
life and policy of the nation." Critics were quick to 
notice that while Butler frequently castigated radical¬ 
ism, he had a striking tolerance for fascism. 

Butler naturally became the chief campus target 
for the Columbia contingent of the new American 
Student Union. Formed on the national level by 
Socialist, liberal, and Communist students in 1935, 
the A.S.U. absorbed the Student League for Industrial 
Democracy and the National Student League to be¬ 
come the leading organization of the radical student 
movement. The first issue of the A.S.U. journal, The 
Student Advocate, edited by the ever-active Wechsler, 
praised Columbia leftists for their efficiency. A.S.U. 
chapters sprang up in the College, the Law School, 
the graduate schools, and the extension division. By 
the spring of 1936, Columbia's A.S.U. was sponsoring 
campus speakers, planning the April peace strike, 
picketing two local barbershops which discriminated 
against blacks, and marching 200-strong in the New 
York May Day parade of that year. 

When President Butler accepted the invitation of 
the University of Heidelberg to send a Columbia 
delegate to the German university's 550th anniversary 
celebration, he handed the A.S.U. its most popular 
issue of the year. Spectator called it "criminal" for 
Columbia to "join in commemorating the new dis¬ 
pensation in German education." One biting editorial 
asked: "Are we Celebrating Hitler's Blood Purges, Dr. 
Butler?" Petitions and demonstrations, organized by 
the A.S.U., abounded. Perhaps the most striking was a 
dramatic bonfire on South Field on May 12, 1936, 
into which a mock Hitler ordered a series of books 
tossed. At the close of the book-burning, a student 
representing Columbia's Heidelberg delegate pre- 


46 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 





sented Hitler with the degree of "Doctor of Laws, 
Culture, and Civilization." 

President Butler did little to calm the furor 
aroused by the Heidelberg incident. Despite his con¬ 
tention that Columbia's participation would in no 
way signify approval of the Nazi-dominated educa¬ 
tional system, his message of greetings to the fes¬ 
tivities began: "It is with pleasure and with hope that 
we salute you . . . who are the guardians of a noble 
heritage." In addition, the University kept the issue 
alive when, during the summer of 1936, it expelled 
Robert Burke, the president of the junior class and a 
leader of the anti-Heidelberg demonstrations. Ac¬ 
cording to a pamphlet published by the American 
Civil Liberties Union, Burke's major act of lese 
majeste seems to have been to declare at the May 12 
rally: "Nicky, I hope you hear this, too, you can send 
a representative to Heidelberg, but let it be known 
that he is not the choice of the Columbia student 
body." 


the campus "has no more to do with academic free¬ 
dom than it has with polar exploration." 

Nevertheless, Columbia's President had felt the 
pressure over the Heidelberg incident. In 1937, when 
the University of Goettingen sent Columbia an invita¬ 
tion to its 200th anniversary celebration, Butler de¬ 
clined it. 

The radical currents sweeping through campus 
life in the 1930s surfaced even in Jester. Wedded 
throughout the 'twenties to the cynical, sophomoric 
brand of humor popularized by H. L. Mencken, Jester 
lagged behind other campus elements in making the 
leap to social activism. After Reed Harris' expulsion, 
Jester noted acidly that the Spectator editor "did not 
have the mature good sense to keep an empty set of 
so-called liberal ideals from running away with him." 
But by November, 1933, Jester reported that "it's 
pretty hard to be whimsical about a thing like the ap¬ 
proaching war," and that "we're in favor of putting 
Columbia on record as opposed to war, in deadly 



ORATOR: Student leader 
David Cook later fought 
in Spain. 


OUTPOST? Some charged 
Spectator with serving 
the Bolsheviks. 


THEOLOGIAN: Reinhold Niebuhr addresses 
peace rally. Niebuhr died recently. 



Throughout the fall of 1936, Columbia students 
demonstrated, struck, and protested against Burke's 
expulsion, and wore "Reinstate Bob Burke" tags sold 
by the A.S.U. On October 12, they picketed Butler's 
home in an all-night "death-watch for academic free¬ 
dom." All to no avail. In his Annual Report for 1935, 
Butler had contended that "for those who are in statu 
pupillari academic freedom "has no meaning what¬ 
ever." Nor, despite Butler's earlier defense of the talk 
given by the German Ambassador, did academic free¬ 
dom apparently have much meaning for outside 
speakers, either. When Burke returned to the Colum¬ 
bia campus in February, 1938 to discuss his work in 
the C.I.O. before an open meeting of the Young Com¬ 
munist League, he was apprehended and forced to 
leave by University detectives. Answering a protest 
against his action by Student Board, President Butler 
argued that a refusal to allow an outside speaker on 


earnest." The humor magazine also turned a mordant 
eye on American capitalism. A fragment from a poem 
appearing in October, 1934 read: 

If you're eager for to shine 
In the plutocratic line 
As a multi-millionaire, 

Employ children of all ages 
And pay sub-starvation wages 
And you'll very soon get there. 

Essays, stories and poems damned the Italian invasion 
of Ethiopia, war profiteers, and General Franco. 
Jester's Christmas, 1937 issue told readers that "some 
of you are going to be murdered by war, others by 
fascism." Reprinting etchings from Goya's Desastres 
de la Guerra, German propaganda posters, and Span¬ 
ish Loyalist appeals, the humor magazine headlined 


ANOTHER ANGRY DECADE 


47 











the section: "That Some Men May Prosper, Other 
Men Must Die." 

And yet, despite its popularity and assertiveness, 
the radical student movement at Columbia, like its 
national counterpart, went into a serious decline in 
the last years of the decade. After 1936, opponents of 
fascism increasingly turned to plans for concerted 
military action, not to pacifism, while outspoken 
social critics began to make a home for themselves 
in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Ironically, 
the Communist Party led the retreat from radicalism. 
Traumatized by fascist success in Europe, Communist 
parties throughout the world abandoned their hard¬ 
line revolutionary stance of the late 1920s and early 
1930s to promote a Popular Front of all "progres¬ 
sive" forces. President Roosevelt's New Deal and 
"collective security" policies consequently found 
growing favor on the college campus among liberals 
and Communists. Only a dwindling band of Socialists 
and pacifists remained out in the cold. In the fall of 
1936, Spectator's straw poll for the Presidency re¬ 
vealed the previously-scorned Roosevelt an easy vic¬ 
tor with 781 votes, Republican Alfred M. Landon 
second with a modest 427, Communist Earl Browder 
third with 119, and Socialist Norman Thomas—the 
victor of 1932—trailing miserably with 88. 

The tone of campus radicalism reflected the shift. 
The Fifth Columbia Anti-War Conference, held in 
December, 1936, heard Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr support 
a collective security program, which it endorsed over 
strong minority opposition. Refusing to recognize the 
split within its own ranks, the Conference also upheld 
the Oxford Oath. On the other hand, it declined to 
administer it to students at the Conference. Spectator 
reported "some of the bitterest internal dissension 
yet seen in the Columbia peace movement," and that 
was saying a good deal. The Amerkan Student Union, 
once the bright star in the radical firmament, decayed 
so severely by October, 1937, that Spectator , in an 
editorial on "The A.S.U. Problem," suggested that the 
organization "search out useful functions which it 
can perform on campus." A student writing in jester 
complained at the end of 1937 that "political action 
is nearly dead since the miserable collapse more than 
a year ago of the campaign to reinstate Bob Burke. 
The American Student Union sleeps through threat¬ 
ening depression and inevitable war" and "mass 
meetings on South Field attract only the tiniest of 
masses." 

Moreover, campus politics were further con¬ 
vulsed by a shift in the A.S.U.'5 anti-war stance. Over 
the 1937 Christmas holidays, the national convention 
of the student organization, meeting on the snow- 
covered campus of Vassar College, voted overwhelm¬ 
ingly to repudiate the Oxford Oath in favor of collec¬ 
tive security. Strongly influenced by the Communist 
determination to bring America into the anti-fascist 


struggle, the delegates, representing 20,000 students 
in 200 colleges, called for an embargo on war mate¬ 
rials, loans, and credits to aggressor nations, and de¬ 
manded a modification of United States neutrality 
provisions. Returning home, Columbia's A.S.U. con¬ 
tingent plunged into a campaign for collective se¬ 
curity, but was opposed by Student Board, which held 
firmly to a policy of strict neutrality guidelines. Spec¬ 
tator , however, took up the new A.S.U. program. In 
an editorial headlined "Neutrality—or Peace?" the 
newspaper warned that fascist aggression would not 
"stop in Spain or China. . . . The attack will continue 
. . . until the United States, itself, is swept away." 
Ironically, Spectator now saw eye-to-eye on the inter¬ 
national situation with its former antagonist, Nicholas 
Murray Butler, who, in the fall of 1937, had de¬ 
nounced isolationism and supported President 
Roosevelt's call for a "quarantine" of aggressor na¬ 
tions. 

The abandonment of pacifism by key elements of 
the radical student movement rapidly undermined 
the once-powerful campus strikes against war. In 
April, 1937, 1,500 Columbia students turned out to 
take part in what Spectator called the "smallest and 
most uneventful peace demonstration at Columbia in 
the last three years." Trying again in the fall, anti-war 
activists drew only 200 students to South Field for a 
demonstration on November 11. Moreover, unlike 
the rally of the preceding spring, in which 90 per cent 
of the participants took the Oxford Oath, this one 
divided sharply between pacifists and proponents of 
collective security. Spectator assailed the "dismal 
demonstration of disinterest in peace activity," com¬ 
plaining that "activity in the progressive movement 
has gradually succumbed to an ever-growing indif¬ 
ference and apathy." The newspaper maintained that 
"the division between the proponents of collective 
security and of isolation is now so complete that a 
single front is virtually impossible, and certainly in¬ 
effectual." 

With the campus split so badly—as illustrated 
once again in the spring of 1938, when a Spectator 


SATIRE: Columbia students portray 
future gold-digger and war-profiteer. 



48 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 


poll found students favoring collective security by a 
4-3 margin—two rival demonstrations took place that 
April. Five hundred students in McMillin Theatre 
heard Norman Thomas and Sidney Hook defend 
neutrality, while 1,000 gathered on South Field as 
William E. Dodd, former American ambassador to 
Germany, spoke for collective security. Trying des¬ 
perately to hold the divided and disheartened stu¬ 
dent movement together in the spring of 1939, Stu¬ 
dent Board and Spectator could do little better than 
organize a forum at which a balance was maintained 
between spokesmen for neutrality and collective se¬ 
curity. 

By the late 1930s, only sympathy for the victims of 
fascist aggression still united the remnants of Colum¬ 
bia's radical student movement. In November, 1936, 
the campus A.S.U. chapter began fundraising for the 
embattled Spanish Republic, and in subsequent years 
it continued to collect money for ambulances, food, 
and medical supplies. On March 5, 1937, Spectator 
announced that Dave Cook, a former member of Stu¬ 
dent Board and a long-time campus radical, was 
fighting for the Loyalists in Spain. Later that month, 
Andre Malraux spoke on the campus to encourage 
further support for the Republic, as did Joseph Lash, 
the A.S.U.'s national secretary, in October. Like Mal¬ 
raux, Lash had just returned from the front lines. In 
late 1938, Columbia's shaky Peace Council petitioned 
President Butler and the trustees to grant special 
scholarships to German refugees, while from 1938 
through 1940, Columbia students promoted a variety 
of fund drives to assist European refugees. 

With the approach of the Second World War, 
little remained of Columbia's once-proud student 
movement. The Columbian reported that "The Class 
of '39 has been notably apathetic in its devotion to 
what is commonly referred to as vital issues. Among 
its members there have been very few, if any rabid 
exponents of the great causes." And what of united 
student action? "Perhaps," said the journal, "they 
were aware of the futility of such efforts in view of the 


situation of the world today which had not been im¬ 
pressed nor greatly altered by the concerted col¬ 
legiate action in the past, or perhaps they were in¬ 
capable as a body of such manifestations of interest, 
but... the fact of their apathy remains." 

By 1940, Columbia's A.S.U. chapter, with 18 dues- 
paying members, seemed to have neither the interest 
nor the power to protest the establishment of Marine 
Corps, Air Force, and Naval training units at Colum¬ 
bia. Although all polls of Columbia students up to the 
Pearl Harbor attack showed them opposed to an 
American declaration of war, they remained star¬ 
tlingly unwilling to protest the gradual militarization 
of the campus. On October 16,1940, for example, an 
academic holiday was declared as Columbia students 
registered for the new peacetime draft. Spectator de¬ 
voted its columns to the issues of room-rent adjust¬ 
ments and academic and extracurricular credit for 
men drafted in the middle of a semester. That same 
day, like a lightning bolt from the past, the Youth 
Committee Against War called an anti-conscription 
demonstration at Broadway and 115th Street. Ten 
demonstrators, twelve policemen, six reporters, and 
six photographers put in a sorry appearance. 

The radical student movement of the 1930s had 
been mobilized in opposition to the blight of the 
Great Depression and to the marching jackboots of 
fascism. During its years of militant protest, it gave 
Columbia a well-merited reputation for social com¬ 
mitment and avant-garde politics. By the late 1930s, 
though, the New Deal and the collective security 
policies of the Roosevelt Administration had con¬ 
vinced many students—particularly the Communists— 
that their goals of social justice and world peace 
could best be attained by working inside the Demo¬ 
cratic Party. With that conclusion, Columbia's radi¬ 
cals traded the politics of protest for more conven¬ 
tional means of social action. When they marched 
bravely off to the war they had sworn never to fight, 
they were on the first leg of their strange journey into 
the ranks of the Liberal Establishment. Q 


Lawrence S. Wittner is an assistant professor of history 
at Vassar College. He received his A.B. from Columbia 
(1962), his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1963), 
and his Ph.D. from Columbia's Graduate Faculties (1967). 
He is the author of Rebels Against War and the editor of 
the forthcoming MacArthur. 

Juliette P. Thayer is a student in the MAT program at 
the University of North Carolina. She received her A.B. 
this June from Vassar College. 


The authors have made extensive use of material in 
the annual reports of the President of Columbia University 
and the Dean of Columbia College, Spectator, Jester, and 
in the Columbiana collection; articles in the New York 
press and liberal journals; historical monographs; and es¬ 
pecially of James Wechsler's absorbing autobiographical 
account in The Age of Suspicion. 


ANOTHER ANGRY DECADE 


49 










Alumni Authors 


Eloquent April by Melville 
Cane '00 is a potpourri of 
light and lyrical verse, and 
prose autobiographical rem¬ 
iniscences. Mr. Cane's po¬ 
ems are delightful. Many 
of his brief narrative pieces 
touch on his meetings with 
distinguished literary fig¬ 
ures. His best bit of prose, 
however, describes an exu¬ 
berant May walk which he took through Central 
Park on his way to a Columbia class, and which 
ended with his arrest for frightening a horse. 
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. $5.95) 



Revolution by Cliche by 

David Cort '24 describes 
how reality is distorted by 
idiom, jargon, slogans, and 
labels. The author assails 
the substitution of cliche 
for thought on many topics 
including sex, childhood, 
and alienation. He is par¬ 
ticularly incensed by the 
glib turns of phrase used to 
mask what he regards as thg horrors of Commu¬ 
nism. (Funk & Wagnalls, $6>9|). A Constellation of 
Heroes is the new title for tFj| reissue of An Astro¬ 
logical Novel. When Mr. Cbrt's novel was first 
published 40 years ago, readers found it outra¬ 
geously cynical and frank. Contemporary readers 
may be less surprised by its forthright descriptions 
of sex and the seamier passions of life, but even 
more perturbed by its brutal cynicism. It is still 
an interesting read. (Grosset & Dunlap, $5.95) 



The Golden Age: A Climate 
for Greatness, Virginia 

1732-1775 hy Clifford Dow- 
dey '25 fbcuses on Wil¬ 
liamsburg in the mid-1700s 
and the generation which 
fathered the eloquent Vir- 
~ , ginians who led the Amer- 

PV j ican Revolution. Dowdey 

^ VI sees the Golden Age as one 

when the aristocratic plant¬ 
ers governed in their own interests, but their in¬ 
terests happily coincided with those of the ma¬ 
jority of freeholders. He sees men of the new 
age—Washington, Jefferson, and Henry—as heirs 
to a tradition of autocratic self-assertion which 
would ultimately prove incompatible with re¬ 
straints imposed by British trade regulations. The 
author clearly admires the dynastic era he docu¬ 
ments. (Little, Brown, $8.95) 




A Catalogue of Crime by 

Jacques Barzun '27 and 
Wendell Hertig Taylor is a 
descriptive bibliography of 
mystery and detective liter¬ 
ature since Poe. It also in¬ 
cludes sections on studies 
of the crime novel, true 
crime, the literature of 
Sherlock Holmes and ghost 
stories. The authors write 
for those who recognize the hedonistic rewards 
of escape into the mystery tale. (Harper & Row, 
$18.95) 



The Admirable Cotton 
Mather by James Playsted 
Wood '27 is an introduc¬ 
tion to the formidable Puri¬ 
tan minister and scholar 
which lauds his accom¬ 
plishments and challenges 
the notion that Mather 
bore significant responsi¬ 
bility for the Salem witch 
trials of 1692. Ages 12 up. 
(Seabury Press, $5.95) 


Career Guidance: Who 
Needs It, Who Provides It, 
Who Can Improve It by 

Eli Ginzberg '31 presents 
the results of a three-year 
study of the vocational 
guidance field, undertaken 
by the Conservation of Hu¬ 
man Resources Project at 
Columbia under Ginzberg's 
leadership. The book con¬ 
cerns itself not only with the processes by which 
young people acquire data about careers, but also 
with the information services available to older 
people seeking to advance or change professions. 
This book is a discussion of the achievements and 
shortcomings of guidance services, not a "How 
to Find a Good Job" manual. (McGraw-Hill, 
$7.95). Urban Health Services: The Case of New 
York, by Eli Ginzberg and the Conservation of 
Human Resources Staff, analyzes the complex 
issues involved in transforming traditional health 
services to meet the needs of contemporary met¬ 
ropolitan society. (Columbia University Press, 
$ 10 . 00 ) 

The Imperial Self: An Essay 
in American Literary and 
Cultural History by Quentin 
Anderson '37 charts the lit¬ 
erary sensibility which in¬ 
creasingly stressed the 
claim for the self rather 
than society as the prin¬ 
cipal arena of human ac¬ 
complishment. In this study 
Anderson assesses Emer¬ 
son, Whitman, and Henry James as authors who 
first urged every reader to imagine his conscious¬ 
ness as the center to and from which every ex¬ 
perience flowed. Anderson offers the literary 
imagination of Hawthorne in contrast to theirs 
because Hawthorne was certain that one is fully 
alive only in society. (Knopf, $7.95) 

James Madison by Harold 
S. Schultz '38 is part of the 
Rulers and Statesmen of the 
World series published by 
Twayne. Two hundred and 
four pages long, this biog¬ 
raphy encompasses all the 
main elements of Madi¬ 
son's life and career. It 
emphasizes however, the 
stateman's shift of strategy 
after the Great Compromise and the consistency 
of his foreign policy. The author makes great use 
of contemporary descriptions of Madison and 
seems to share the admiration articulated in most 
of them. 

Graphic Design for the 
Computer Age by Edward 
A. Hamilton '42 is a primer 
on the uses of graphic de¬ 
sign in communicating in¬ 
formation. The book covers 
such subjects as: Illustra¬ 
tion styles, the photograph 
as a design property, visual 
footnotes, the exploration 
of abstract verbal concepts 
through graphics, and the full use of color. Mar¬ 
velous color plates are included. (Van Nostrand 
Reinhold, $19.95) 






Correction 

In the Winter-Spring issue, Phtalocyanine Tech¬ 
nology, by Yale A. Meltzer, should have read 
Phthalocyanine Technology, by Yale L. Meltzer. 
Strategies of Community Organization, edited by 
John Ehrlich, was published by F. E. Peacock, not 
by F. E. Lee Peacock. His other book, Student 
Power, Participation, and Revolution (Association 
Press), is also available in paperback, at $3.95. 


Chushingura (The Treasury 
of Loyal Retainers), a pup¬ 
pet play translated by Don¬ 
ald Keene '42 is the most 
famous of all Japanese 
dramas. Written around 
1748 for puppet theater, it 
now better known in 
Kabukj performances, and 
cinema and television 
versions. This is a transla¬ 
tion of the original script with notes and an in¬ 
troduction to help elucidate the play for English- 
language readers. (Columbia University Press: 
Hardcover, $6.00; Paperback, $1.95) 



Iw k 



Television's Classic Com¬ 
mercials by Lincoln Dia- 
mant '43 analyzes a group 
of well-known TV adver¬ 
tisements from the period 
1948-58 in terms of their 
psychological impact on 
unsophisticated viewers and 
consequent sociological sig¬ 
nificance. (Hastings House, 
$14.50) 



Sledgehammer by Walter 
Wager '44 is a fast-moving 
tale of four ex-OSS officers 
who reorganize themselves 
in 1970 to avenge the re¬ 
cent violent death of an 
[ old war buddy in a mob- 
r-ruled deep south 
county. With cunning and 
I bravery they infiltrate the 
1 "alien territory" and smash 
its lethalIy corrupt political machine to bits. This 
is good no-think entertainment fare and will prob¬ 
ably end up on the wide screen one day. (Mac¬ 
millan, $5.95). Viper Three is also first-rate movie 
material. Five condemned murderers achieve the 
impossible: They secure control of a nuclear 
weapon launch station and proceed to make a 
few tricky non-negotiable demands of the Presi¬ 
dent of the United States. In the best Failsafe 
tradition, imminent nuclear holocaust becomes 
almost believable. (Macmillan, $5.95) 


Championship NBA by 

Leonard Koppett '46 is a 
basketball connoisseur's 
portfolio of pictures and 
descriptions celebrating the 
big moments in national 
basketball playoffs from 
1947 through 1970. (Dial 
Press: Hardcover, $7.95; 
Softcover, $3.95) 


Chinese Lyricism: Shih Po¬ 
etry from the Second to 
the Twelfth Century by 

Burton Watson '49 includes 
over 200 treasured Chi¬ 
nese poems with helpful 
explicatory material in the 
form of critical, historical, 
and biographical essays and 
notes. The book devotes 
much space to poets of the 
Six Dynasties and Sung eras, whose work has re¬ 
ceived little attention until now. A reader need 
not be a specialist to enjoy this volume. (Colum¬ 
bia University Press: Hardcover, $9.00; Paperback, 
$3.45) 



50 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






The Rights of Americans: 
What They Are—What They 
Should Be edited by Nor¬ 
man Dorsen '50 analyzes 
the legal precedents for 31 
individual rights, and ex¬ 
plores the possibilities for 
further doctrinal develop¬ 
ment of these rights. Such 
well established rights as 
due process, equal protec¬ 
tion, and free speech are examined, as well as the 
newly emerging rights of consumers, servicemen, 
welfare recipients, and others. This, is an inter¬ 
esting and handy reference. (Pantheon Books, 
$12.50) 



A Story from Michigan by Arthur Thomas '51 is a 
biography of chemist, industrialist, and legislator 
Clarke F. DaVis. (California State Polytechnic Press) 


The University Crisis Reader in two volumes: The 
Liberal University Under Attack (I) and Confronta¬ 
tion and Counterattack (II) edited by Immanuel 
Wallerstein '51 and Paul Starr '70 collects essays, 
notes, and position papers from diverse groups 
and individuals on the subject of university tur¬ 
moil. Several articles concern Columbia and/or are 
written by Columbia-affiliated people including 
Jacques Barzun, Grayson Kirk, Margaret Mead, 
Charles Frankel, and Mark Rudd. There is a con¬ 
cluding essay by each of the editors. (Vintage 
Books, $2.45 per volume) 



The Boys' and Girls' Book 
About Divorce by Richard 
A. Gardner '52, a child psy¬ 
chiatrist, is intended for 
children. Dr. Gardner be¬ 
lieves that an open sym¬ 
pathetic discussion of the 
problems of divorce can 
be helpful to youngsters 
whose parents are contem¬ 
plating divorce or have 
been divorced. (Science House, $7.95) 



Little Spiro by Ralph 
Schoenstein '53 (illustrated 
by Arnold Roth) spoofs 
Agnew in a series of 
Schoenstein-invented let¬ 
ters, (Doems, and essays 
supposedly written by the 
vice-president during his 
childhood. (William Mor¬ 
row paperback, $1.95) 


The English Historical Novel by Avrom Fleishman 
'54 shows the close links between literature and 
theories of history in the historical novel genre. 
The evolution of the genre is traced from Sir 
Walter Scott's works through those of Dickens, 
Thackeray, Eliot, Hardy, Conrad, and Virginia 
Woolf. (The Johns Hopkins Press, $10.00). Also by 
Professor Fleishman is A Reading of Mansfield 
Park: An Essay in Critical Synthesis. In this paper¬ 
back volume Fleishman considers several aspects 
of Austen's novel and examines, augments, and 
sometimes argues with what previous critics have 
said about it. By applying a variety of critical ap¬ 
proaches to this one book, ,the author aims to rec¬ 
oncile divergent points of view in a single method, 
to be used for a full reading of any complex novel. 
(The Johns Hopkins Press, $1.95) 



Hormonal and Attractant 
Pesticide Technology by 

Yale L. Meltzer '54 deals 
with the vital area of tech¬ 
nology concerned with 
eliminating pollution, and 
other hazards caused by 
many conventional pesti¬ 
cides. This book examines 
in technical detail the re¬ 
sults of experiments with 
pesticides, made of hormones and hormone-like 
substances, which interfere with the life cycle of 
noxious insects but have little or no effect on 
nontarget insects and farm animals. (Noyes Data 
Corporation, $35.00) 


Dreams in Seventeenth 
Century English Literature 

by Manfred Weidhorn '54 
examines the four major 
theories of dreams current 
in that era and th£ rela¬ 
tionships between literary 
genre and type of dream. 
(Mouton & Company, 
$7.50). Richard Lovelace is 
a study of the Cavalier 
poet. (Twayne Publishers, $4.50) 


Making the Best of It lay 

Newton Frohlich '56 tells 
how to make divorce as 
private and painless as pos¬ 
sible. The book contains 
practical information on 
finding the right lawyer, 
alimony and tax benefits, 
and the divorce require¬ 
ments in all fifty states, 
Canada, Puerto Rico, the 
Virgin Islands and Mexico. (Harper & Row, $4.95) 


The Dimensions of History edited by Thomas N. 
Guinsburg '59 is a collection of readings aimed at 
answering the undergraduate question: Is history 
relevant? The 13 included essays examine divergent 
points of view on the nature of history and illus¬ 
trate the varying forces which must be considered 
in assessing reasons for historical change. Among 
the contributors to this volume are Schlesinger, 
Lynd, Koht, and Hofstadter. (Rand McNally college 
department paperback) 


Benjamin grabbed His Glicken and ran by Fred 
Gordon '60 is the surreal story of Benjamin Hackett 
—a terrified and terrifying 23-year-old who lives on 
the edge of madness. Benjamin, who spends his 
days feverishly jotting down his fantasies, together 
with scientific notes about the brain, becomes 
utterly enmeshed in a violent futuristic novel and 
its decadent female author. The line between his 
own life and that of the futuristic hero quickly 
blurs in Hackett's mind as the novel hurtles to¬ 
wards a bizzarre ending. And no less surprising 
han the curves of Benjamin's existence is the 
anguage of the novel-within-the-novel which en¬ 
snares him: a language of everyday simple words 
which slap each other on the back and emerge 
trippled, yet grotesquely clear. (Harper & Row, 
$6.95) 




U.S. Guide to Nursing 
Homes (Midwest Edition) 
by Dan Greenberg '56 is a 
city-by-city directory of 
nursing homes. Some en¬ 
tries briefly describe an 
institution's facilities and 
charges; others give only 
the name, address, and 
number of beds. An intro¬ 
ductory section offers ad¬ 
vice on how to judge a nursing home's services 
and provides a 22-question checklist, (East coast 
and west coast regional edition are also avail¬ 
able.) (Grosset & Dunlap, $2.95) 




Against Emptiness by Paul 
Zweig '56 is a first volume 
of poetry. The poems speak 
with a clear, resonant voice 
of the poet's own circum¬ 
stances and identity. The 
statements are short but 
their implications are far- 
reaching and universal. 
(Harper & Row, $4.95) 


Electronic SwitchingTheory 
and Circuits by H. J. 

Beuscher, A. H. Budlong, 
M. B. Haverty and Gerald 
Waldbaum '58 examines 
both fundamental and more 
advanced topics in sequen- 
jjlSPf ’ tial circuit design theory 

A 4HP i, and practice. (Van Nostrand 
reB mttKk Rein ^°'d Company, $17.95) 


Eisenhower, My Eisenhower 

by Jerome Charyn '59 is 
a far-out satire of American 
life starring Toby Malo- 
thibon; an Azaz gypsy, who 
like all members of his 
tribe sports a discreet horn, 
has an insatiable sexual 
appetite, and is despised 
by most Anglos— the term 
used by the Azaz to de¬ 
scribe WASPS, Jews, and blacks alike. Although 
Malothioon is a former war-hero and gook- 
strangier, he has trouble adjusting to middle class 
life. Uneasy at home with his scientist-wife, her 
cat, and his mUsclebound brother who usually 
lives in the garage, Malothioon defects to the 
equally bizarre world of Azaz guerrilla warfare. 
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, $5.95) 




The Politics of Authenticity 

by Marshall Berman '61 ex¬ 
pounds a fascinating thesis 
which seeks the romantic 
roots of modern day radi¬ 
calism in the ideas of Mon¬ 
tesquieu and Rousseau. Ac¬ 
cording to Berman, the 
conception of the personal 
as political was perceived 
by these two thinkers and 
remained a central theme of the Romantic Age, 
1789. to 1848. The ideology of the next hundred 
years or so, however, viewed the quest for in¬ 
dividual autonomy as antithetical to a socialistic 
form of society, equating individualism with capi¬ 
talism and collectivism with socialism. It remained 
for the New Left to “discover" that a capitalistic 
society inhibited personal development, and to 
begin to outline a new political ideology where 
individual self-knowledge and assertion (do your 
own thing) lead to community and government 
by consent. Berman dissects the writings of Mon¬ 
tesquieu and Rousseau and commends their vi¬ 
sions to the shapers of liberation movements. 
(Atheneum, $8.95) 


Keats and His Poetry: A 
Study in Development by 

Morris Dickstein '61 fo¬ 
cuses on the patterns and 
strategies of consciousness 
that shape the movement 
of Keats' poems, and on 
the changing relations be¬ 
tween imagination and re¬ 
ality in his earlier and later 
work. Keats emerges as a 
crisis-poet, as his kinship with the other Roman¬ 
tics and with the modernist sensibility is explored. 
(University of Chicago Press, $9.50) 




The Early Life of Sean O'Casey by Martin B. Mar- 
gulies '61 deals with the first 40 years of the play¬ 
wright's life, before he began writing for the stage. 
It demonstrates that he was a product of the 
middle or lower middle classes, and not of the 
Dublin tenements as is commonly believed. (Dol¬ 
men, $3.50) 


j The Death and Life of Harry 
Goth by D. Keith Mano '63 
a comic novel about a 
nice-guy-slob hero and his 
maniacally grotesque fam¬ 
ily. The novel manages to 
incorporate a sex-pervert 
I grandmother, several idi¬ 
ots, six deaths, ready-frozen 
1 corpses, and—most remark¬ 
ably—a rather poignant 
Christian salvation for the hero. (Alfred Knopf, 
$6.95) 



ALUMNI AUTHORS 


51 









Obituaries 


1897 Isaac Yohannan 

January 8, 1971 

1898 Charles Hebard Edwards 

January 4, 1971 


1901 George A. Acken 

April 8, 1971 


1902 Chapman Ropes 


1905 Walter W. Mott 

January 25,1971 

Gerdrd Pitt 

March 29, 1971 


1907 Charles R. Brodix 
February 25, 1971 
Marcus V. Mendell 
Thomas E. Snyder 

August 30, 1970 


1908 Sylvan Morris Barnet 


1911 Milton Greenebaum 
January 1971 
Charles J. W. Meisel 
March 27, 1971 
Gabriel Rubino 
April 19, 1971 


1912 Joseph Liff 

Sampson H. Miller 

William Raymond Root 
May 1970 
Brenton Welling 


1913 Cornelius Fersch 

July 23, 1970 

Dallas W. Haines 

March 3,1971 


1914 Maurice C. Hull 

George Luther Van Buskirk 

March 25,1971 


1915 Herman Goodman 
February 9,1971 
Sterling E. Graham 


1917 William Nicholas Barbarito 
Tracy A. Clute 

January 29, 1970 

William Brigden Codling 
William Harold Miller 

November 1970 


1918 Harry Leslie Bullock 
Carl Erichs Hartwig 
March 4,1971 
Herbert Walter Lange 
February 20, 1971 
Allan B. Leerburger 
July 31,1970 
Aaron Levinsky 
May 5, 1970 

Lech Wojciech S. Zychlinski 


1919 Frank J. Altschul 
May 3,1971 
Alan E. Burns 
April 19,1971 
Campbell Horan 
Anthony F. Raymond 

Mortimer William Rodgers 

January 1970 


1920 Phya Vidura-Dharmabinet 

January 28, 1971 


1921 Abraham Malich 

April 27, 1971 

William P. Schweitzer 

May 25,1971 


1922 Paul D. Bernard 

February 17,1971 

William Malangethon Nead 

January 2,1971 


1923 Peter A. Lanese 

Albert Claridge Moore 
Morris Walder 

January 26,1971 


1924 George Duncan Crookes 
September 20,1969 
Samuel Englander 
William Joseph Hawthorne 
April 9, 1971 
Jack Schultz 
April 29, 1971 

Leon Singerman 

December 3,1970 


1925 Ronald L. Barry 
March 25, 1971 
Joseph H. Gleason 
February 18, 1971 
Paul E. Hering 
Benjamin P. Roosa 
February 8,1971 


1926 Carl H. Barten 

August 1970 

Eugene Burr 

March 27,1971 

Alan M. Fenner 

June 1970 
Sidney Lindner 

December 17, 1970 

William Brown Meloney 
May 4,1971 
John H. Moriarty 
February 13,1971 
Marshall Rosett 
December 11,1970 


1927 James H. Campbell 

May 1971 


1928 William F. Wacker 

February 8, 1971 


1929 H. Jesse Kirchner 

March 8,1971 
David Schlein 

May 23, 1971 


1931 Julius Joseph Seaman 

May 3, 1971 


1932 Walter F. Salvo 

Emanuel S. YVieder 

January 31,1971 


1933 Richard Hirsch 
January 16,1971 
James P. J. McAndris 

April 4, 1970 


1935 Charles Ferdinand Gilkeson 
November 23, 1970 
Martin Harold Kelly 

April 28,1971 

George E. Seguin 

May 1971 


1936 Rene Casper 
March 22, 1971 
Ralph Sylvester Lynch 

March 29, 1971 


1938 Sumner Stewart Smith, jr. 

June 7,1970 

Jacques Von Brunt Voris 

May 20, 1971 


1940 Charles L. Christiernin, jr. 

April 18,1970 


1943 John R. Henry 

January 4,1971 


1946 Martin H. Perle 

July 26,1970 

James P. Scotti 

June 11, 1970 


1951 Robert W. Harmon 

March 22,1970 


1952 Joseph Colaninno 
November 9,1970 
Elliott H. Grosof 
November 27, 1970 

William R. Miller 


1958 Philip M. Dugan 

February 1971 


1961 David A. Dyal 

April 10,1971 


1968 Gerald A. Fitzsimons 

March 27,1971 


52 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 






Rockwell Kent '04, artist and illustrator who often 
aroused controversy because of his avowedly 
leftist philosophy. Although he was, at various 
times, an architect, painter, illustrator, lithog¬ 
rapher, xylographer, cartoonist, advertising artist, 
carpenter, dairy farmer, explorer, and labor 
leader, it was as an illustrator and painter that 
he earned the most recognition. Another kind of 
recognition followed his frequent and vocal 
espousal of controversial political causes, and his 
unabashed support of the Soviet Union, to which 
he donated 80 paintings and 800 drawings and 
from which he received the Lenin Peace Prize. 
He was also a successful complainant in a Su¬ 
preme Court case which helped establish the 
right to travel. Died March 14, 1971. 


Maurice Hull '14, machinery company executive 
and indefatiguable friend of Columbia. As an ex¬ 
ecutive for the Royal-McBee Co., he traveled all 
over the world to manage its factories. He served 
as president of the Columbia Alumni Club in 
Cleveland, and on the Board of Directors of the 
Alumni federation. In 1952, Mr. Hull was 
awarded the University Medal, and in 1956, he 
added a Dean's Award to the many honors he 
had earned from his grateful Alma Mater. Died 
January 6,1971. 


Dr. George H. Roberts jr. '16, internist, cardiolo¬ 
gist, and professor emeritus of medicine at the 
State University of New York. A trustee of the 
Brooklyn Law School, as well as of numerous 
charitable and civic organizations, Dr. Roberts 
was named a Knight of the Order of Orange- 
Nassau by the Dutch government in 1947, in rec¬ 
ognition of his services as attending physician 
for the Dutch administrative staff in New York 
City. Died February 25,1971. 


Armand G. Erpf '17, financier, economist, and 
friend of Columbia. He was a director of numer¬ 
ous concerns including Loeb Rhoades and Cro¬ 
well Collier and Macmillan. Mr. Erpf is credited 
with developing securities analysis in the 1920s 
and approaching financial problems intellectual¬ 
ly and innovatively. He served as a colonel in 
the Army during World War II, winning the 
Legion of Merit. He was a generous and ener¬ 
getic contributor to Columbia, chairing several 
alumni committees. Died February 2, 1971. 



Gustav Davidson 


Gustav Davidson '19, poet and author of the highly 
acclaimed study, Dictionary of Angels. Brought 
to the United States from Poland in his early 
childhood, he was an editor as well as a poet, 
and founded a number of now defunct poetry 
magazines in the 'twenties and 'thirties. As ex¬ 
ecutive secretary of the Poetry Society of 
America, he introduced to the conservative so¬ 
ciety such radical poets as LeRoi Jones, and was 
awarded the di Castagnola award by the Society 
in 1967. Died February 10,1971. 




Oscar Rogers Flynn jr. '21, educator and consultant. 
A business consultant for many large companies, 
he returned to the Graduate Faculties in 1958 
for his doctorate. Subsequently he taught at the 
Graduate School of Business, and at Trinity Col¬ 
lege, Dublin, Ireland, where he was a visiting 
professor. Died May 22,1971. 


William Schweitzer '21, executive, philanthropist, 
and champion marksman, a director of Kimberly- 
Clark and world-renowned sharpshooter. Cap¬ 
tain of the Columbia rifle team in 1931, he con¬ 
tinued to lead American teams in international 
competitions, as well as winning many individual 
awards. Mr. Schweitzer was also chairman of the 
1948 Elizabeth, New Jersey United Jewish Ap¬ 
peal, and a member of the Board of Governors 
of the American Hospital in Paris. Died May 24, 
1971. 


John Storck, '22, scholar and teacher. Dr. Storck, 
who taught at Columbia and later at Sarah Law¬ 
rence, was known for his versatility and dis¬ 
regard for convention. When he taught philoso¬ 
phy and Contemporary Civilization at Columbia, 
he frequently challenged some of the tradition- 
bound methods of teaching and testing. Died 
March 25, 1971. 


House Baker Jameson '24, star of radio and tele¬ 
vision. Originally known for his portrayal of 
"Renfrew of the Mounted" on radio, he was 
also active in both serious and popular produc¬ 
tions on the New York stage. He was so popular 
as the father in "The Aldrich Family" radio show 
that he stepped into the same role when the 
show moved to television. Died April 23, 1971. 


William B. Sherman '27, internationally known al¬ 
lergist. Although a victim of multiple sclerosis, 
Dr. Sherman remained active in teaching, re¬ 
search, and practice until his death. An early 
experimenter with allergies, Dr. Sherman was 
best known for his research on the immune 
mechanism of allergy diseases, and as founder 
and later director of the Roosevelt Hospital In¬ 
stitute of Allergy. Died March 2, 1971. 


W. Claude Fields jr. '28, lawyer and entertainer. 
Despite the fact that he often appeared on tele¬ 
vision to reminisce about his famous father, Mr. 
Fields attained prominence in his own right as 
an attorney in California, where he was presi¬ 
dent of the Los Angeles Lawyers' Society, and a 
member of the Citizens Rehabilitation Service. 
He was also active in the International Alumni 
Program and was a John Jay Associate. Died 
February 16,1971. 


Walter Smith 

Walter D. Smith '47, educator and administrator. 
After earning a master's degree from Teachers' 
College, he joined the University Placement 
Bureau, and later became Dean of Students for 
the Graduate School of Business. The last posi¬ 
tion he held was Director of Alumni Affairs and 
Development at the business school. Died March 
8, 1971. 


Nicholas J. Caputo '48, attorney. After service in 
the European theatre during World War II, 
where Caputo rose to the rank of staff sergeant, 
he became an assistant New York State attorney 
general in charge of stock frauds. Following an 
unsuccessful election bid for a City Council seat 
in 1961 Caputo became an assistant district at¬ 
torney of Queens County, and taught criminal 
and penal law at Nassau Community College. 
Died February 10,1971. 


O. Rodgers Flynn Jr. 


Earl L. Carter '49, pilot and human rights pioneer. 
A 23-year serviceman in the Navy, Commander 
Carter was the second black man to win Navy 
wings and the first to command a jet. He served 
with distinction in Korea, garnering a cluster of 
decorations, and was on the Pacific Command 
staff when he retired. Died April 23,1971. 


OBITUARIES 


53 








View From The Bridge 

Envious Journalists Watched 
As Ping-Pong Players Crossed Into China 
—And Awaited Their Own Turns. 


By Arnold Abrams 


HONG KONG—An integral part of early boyhood 
in Brooklyn used to be a game called "Digging to 
China." My.crowd played it on the shores of Brighton 
Beach with simple rules: contestants shovelled fast 
and furiously for a given time, then he who had dug 
the deepest hole was declared the winner and 
deemed to have reached China. 

For a heady time early last spring, my greatest 
victory seemed close at hand. I had not made it to 
China yet, but was far closer than Mark Reiner, Billy 
Rome or Barry Krupnick was ever likely to come. I 
was standing on the border, and it did not strain the 
imagination to envision the day I would step over. 

A group of American table-tennis players and 
journalists already had, the first such delegation to 
enter China since Mao Tse-tung took over in 1949. 
More U.S. newsmen were expected to follow in the 
near future. Those next to go probably were among 
the group of us gathered to greet the players as they 
returned across the border bridge at Lowu, a stark 
structure which separates the People's Republic of 
China from Hong Kong. 

That bridge has some of the mystique of the vast 
land lying beyond it, and when the Americans walked 
—floated, actually—back across it, there was an air of 
conquest about them. They were a bunch of inno¬ 
cents abroad who had travelled where a generation 
of rigid diplomats had feared to tread. It was an excit¬ 
ing day, that sunny Saturday in April, for it climaxed 
what future textbooks may call Peking's Great Ping- 
Pong Ploy, and a sense of history hung among those 
of us on hand. 


54 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




Although unprepared for such a 
mission, the ping-pong players had 
been, by all accounts, near-flawless in 
fielding the show of friendship with 
which they had been showered by the 
Chinese. Their week of feasting, sight¬ 
seeing and tourney playing had left 
unforgettable memories, attracted 
worldwide attention, and engendered 
high hopes about a new era of amica¬ 
ble Sino-American relations. 

The whole thing had started in 
low key. One measure of how flat- 
footed Peking's ploy caught everyone 
was the initial response of newsmen 
in Hong Kong. Hearing that a bunch 
of American ping-pong players had 
been invited to China surprised most 
correspondents here, but did not gen¬ 
erate great excitement. 

In fact, many correspondents 
were annoyed at having to spend the 
better part of a Friday evening at the 
airport awaiting the group's arrival 
from Tokyo. "This is strictly a non¬ 
news event as far as I'm concerned," 
grumbled the representative of a ma¬ 
jor national newspaper. "When they 
come out—that may be a story." 

Those widely shared sentiments 
were softened after it became ap¬ 
parent how colorful a group was go¬ 
ing into China. They were abandoned 
completely the following day, when 
it was announced that several Ameri¬ 
can journalists would join the tour 
(the same grumbling correspondent 
was near tears that day; he and his 
paper's top executives had been so 
unimpressed by the matter that they 
had neglected to apply for a visa to 
accompany the group). 

At the airport, 18-year-old John 
Tannehill was first into the arrivals 
area. He ambled out in bib overalls 
and granny glasses. Then came Glenn 
Cowan, with floppy hat, shoulder- 
length hair and bell-bottom, tie-dyed 
trousers. At first nobody knew 
whether this was the ping-pong team 
or a travelling vaudeville troupe. The 
other players soon followed, however, 
and it quickly became apparent that 
they constituted quite a mixture. 

Aside from college students like 
Tannehill and Cowan, the group in¬ 
cluded a straight-laced Chrysler Cor¬ 
poration executive from Detroit, a 
bearded college instructor from Long 
Island, a black U.N. employee from 
Brooklyn and an IBM computer pro¬ 
grammer from Seattle. If the Chinese 


AMBASSADOR: 


were genuinely interested and willing 
to probe, it seemed their guests would 
give them a good sense of what the 
American people were about, 

"We are an incredible bunch," re¬ 
marked J. R. (Tim) Boggan, a 40-year- 
old faculty member of Long Island 
University. "It's like we were straight 
out of central casting. Think of almost 


C/en Cowan returns across border bridge, 
dressed in same bell bottoms he wore 
to meeting with Chou En-lai. 

any type and we've got one. An amaz¬ 
ing group." 

As far as anyone could determine, 
however, the American ping-pong 
delegation included no political acti¬ 
vists and nobody with special knowl¬ 
edge about—or even particular interest 
in—China. "That's just fine," Boggan 
observed. "It adds a certain purity to 




VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE 


55 








CELEBRITY: Later, Cowan speaks into microphones 
held by envious newsmen. 


the situation." 

Purity there was. If he does noth¬ 
ing else even vaguely noteworthy in 
his life, Cowan should go down in 
history as the first person ever to be 
received by a Chinese premier while 
wearing purple bell-bottom trousers. 
Moreover, he had a poignant ex¬ 
change with Premier Chou En-lai 


about the meaning of the hippie 
movement in America, and the prin¬ 
ciple of judging people by what they 
are, not what they wear. Chou, one of 
the most sophisticated and unflap¬ 
pable of men, was taken aback by 
Cowan's straight-forwardness; but he 
responded well and won the Ameri¬ 
cans' genuine admiration. "Pretty cool 


guy," Cowan said of Chou afterward. 

Cowan, of course, may not have 
been hippiedom's best representative. 
For all his anti-establishment trap¬ 
pings, the 19-year-old Santa Monica 
(Calif.) State College sophomore was 
not above looking for a large pile of 
cash from Life Magazine; he also dis¬ 
played conventional capitalistic wis¬ 
dom in playirig his unconventional 
role for all it was worth. Still, he was 
the American delegation's star attrac¬ 
tion, and Chou seemed to enjoy the 
dialogue he prompted. The youth 
showed a spontaneity that Dulles or 
Rusk or Nixon could never produce, 
and the time and place were right for 
it. 

Typically, some China specialists 
in the U.S. Consulate here were un¬ 
happy about the situation. "We finally 
get a chance for a marvelous first¬ 
hand look at what's going on in 
there," complained one, "and what 
do we get? A bunch of tourists who 
haven't the slightest idea what to look 
for. They're useless—even worse than 
useless—to us." That may have been 
precisely the point, of course; it was at 
least firm evidence that, despite the 
distance, Peking knows a great deal 
about Madison Avenue. 

The timing and grace with which 
the Chinese extended and imple¬ 
mented their precedent-shattering in¬ 
vitation suggested, moreover, that 
Washington has much to learn about 
diplomacy from Peking. The invitation 
was made almost off-handedly in 
Japan by the head of China's table- 
tennis association. It was accepted 
quickly and enthusiastically. Ostensi¬ 
bly, it was prompted by developing 
friendship between Americans and 
their Chinese counterparts at the 
world table-tennis championships, 
but few observers believed it came 
about quite that way. 

"Americans might make such an 
off-the-cuff gesture, like Lyndon John¬ 
son bringing a camel driver back to 
the States," remarked one Western 
diplomat here, "but not the Chinese. 
They think such things out before they 
act. This was not a spontaneous 'hap¬ 
pening.' " 

A smiling Chou En-lai told his 
American guests that "You have 
opened a new page in the relations of 
the Chinese and American people." 
Actually, he had opened the page; 
they happened to be on it. But no 


56 


COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY 




BRIDGING TWO WORLDS: The bridge at Lowu, connecting Hong Kong 
and mainland China, has some of the mystique of 
the vast land lying beyond it. 


matter. Peking's gesture was generally 
viewed as a response to a series of 
ice-breaking moves made by Wash¬ 
ington in the previous 18 months. It 
was a natural consequence of the 
"friendship first, competition second" 
theme which Chou personally stressed 
to the Chinese team before it left for 
Japan. 

There were other implications 
too. Peking's move was seen in the 
context of China's chilly relations with 
the Soviet Union, the U.S. withdrawal 
from Southeast Asia and the economic 
and political challenges posed by 
Japan. Few analysts seemed willing to 
credit the Chinese with simply want¬ 
ing to end more than two decades' 
mutual hostility. Nevertheless, the 
move may prove to be the first step to¬ 
ward accomplishing precisely that— 
or so it seemed in early April—and the 
ramifications were mind-boggling. 

China's admission of American 
journalists, coupled with Chou's re¬ 
marks, officials' projections and per¬ 
sonal hopes, prompted visits by most 
correspondents in Hong Kong to the 
China Travel Service, which handles 
visitors' visa and travel arrangements 


for Peking. Apropos of Hong Kong, 
the agency's main office is adjacent to 
a topless bar. It is not difficult to dis¬ 
tinguish between the two establish¬ 
ments, however. The bar displays pic¬ 
tures of its employees on the job; the 
agency features Chairman Mao, fully 
clad. 

Inside, under a giant banner call¬ 
ing upon the people of the world to 
"unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors 
and their running dogs," the agency 
manager received us courteously. He 
accepted our calling cards, jotted 
down pertinent information, and 
promised to pass everything on to his 
superiors in Peking. 

Two weeks before the Great Ping- 
Pong ploy, American journalists rarely 
reached the calling card stage before 
being ushered out by China Travel 
Service employees. Nobody knew 
whether the change was mere window 
dressing and maybe very temporary, 
but it seemed encouraging—enough, 
at least, to spark visions of being the 
first from my block in Brooklyn to win 
the old digging-to-China game in a 
way none of us ever thought possible. 

Q 


Arnold Abrams '61, former Spec¬ 
tator managing editor and Newsday 
reporter, studied Chinese as a Journal¬ 
ism Fellow at Columbia's East Asian 
Institute. He has been based in Hong 
Kong since September, 1968, and has 
traveled extensively through Southeast 
Asia. His dispatches appear regularly 
in the Far Eastern Economic Review 
and The New Leader, and are carried 
in numerous domestic newspapers. 
He is a frequent contributor to CCT. 


VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE 


57 





























~ ..Columbia 
College 

Today 

Room 336 • 632 West 125th Street 
New York, New York 10027 


Address Correction Requested 


Non-Profit Organization 
U.S. Postage 

PAID 

New York, N.Y. 
PERMIT NO. 3593